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G21 WORLD HQ - During the waning hours of 2003, we polled our staff writers and the Mailing List Membership for nominees for our "Bottom Ten" list of individuals for the year. Much like Mr. Blackwell's famed "Worst Dressed" list, ours is a reverse listing; we are choosing the people the world could have done without last year.
What follows is a digest of List Member comments and our final choices, after extensive auditing, of the dregs of humanity last year.
Having conducted this exercise, off and on, for over a decade now (we discontinued it briefly during at the end of the 1990s and the beginning of this decade), I've been often disappointed but more often bemused by the results.
This year, I noted that responses from the Mailing List Members fell of sharply from previous years. Was it that they (you) were too absorbed with Holiday revels or that they thought 2003 was a dandy year, on balance?
What was most interesting, this year, was the near unanimity of the G-Crew.
Let the Games begin!
Peace to all
10. Michael Jackson
I am not sure if I should send this back to you directly but what the hey? I couldn't find a link on the web to send my application. However, my nomination for the bottom 10 is Paris Hilton. She might be a nice person but she is someone who hasn't really done much but be born to the right parents.
Cheers,
I don't think it will be hard to choose number one:
George Bush!! For making the world an infinitely less safe, democratic
place.
Regards,
That's how the readership poll came out. Based on the nominees supplied by the complete list of Mailing List Member responses, herewith the G21 Mailing List Member's Bottom Ten List for 2003:
10 - Martha Stewart
GAYNOR PAYNTER, our writer from Johannesburg, SOUTH AFRICA, has this to say:
Let me be the first to nominate Saddam Hussein although I think my boss has
to run a close second.
Regards,
And the last sample is from TAPAS RAY, our new contributor from Calcutta, INDIA:
Rod:
Sorry for taking so long. Here they are --
1. Messrs George Bush (son of the dad) & Osama bin Laden (assuming he's
alive).
Sorry, I couldn't give you the full ten. It's a draw between Bush and Laden
for the top notch.
Tapas
Coming up with this year's list was not that difficult for us because four of the ten nominees supplied by our Mailing List Members and our staff were alumni of last year's list. (Goes to show how much opprobrium from GENERATOR 21 has an effect for people's behavior, doesn't it?) So without further ado:
10 - a.k.a Al Queda - We put it that way because the serious anti-terrorism experts we've interviewed ourselves, as well as those we read featured in other publications, to a person insist that there is now no such thing as a formal organization known as al Queda. That organization hasn't existed since the American conquest of Afghanistan and overthrow of the Taliban. The face of international terrorism today, these experts argue convincingly, is much more diffuse. Terrorism is now committed by independent cells and loose-knit organizations, many of whom were trained by the former al Queda, but none of whom take orders from anyone. The financing of terrorism has become less centralized, as well, as various Western governments have seized assets and investigated front organizations.
Thus, while admitting that international terrorism is real and threatening, we at G21 get upset every time we hear some talking head or politician (mis)use the term "al Queda."
We at G21 sincerely hope you get that economic assistance and non-aggression pact you're asking for. Your people could use it. Then, you must make good on your promise to dismantle those nukes and end the development program.
But all the evidence is already in the public record and lots of newspapers and magazines. Somewhere (probably in a basement) in the White House (probably right below Karl Rove's desk) is an office where a squad of people is employed in the task of exposing undercover CIA agents who happen to work with former diplomats who put the lie to Bush junta assertions (like Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife and himself, respectively) or former Justice Department lawyers (in the most recent case) who put the lie to the assertions of Attorney General Ashcroft's office. The squad's job is to contact Mouthpiece Media p
arrots like Mr. Novak, Bill O'Reilly of Fox News, et alia, and have them crank up the propaganda machine against these dissenters. These so-called journalists gladly oblige the wishes of the junta, even if it means endangering the lives of CIA operatives overseas.
G21 insists that names be named.
THE WORST PERSON AROUND TODAY IS GEORGE W.BUSH. We tried to give this man the benefit of the doubt (and the runner-up spot) last year because we wanted to believe there was some grain of decency in him. He went on in 2003 to prove to us how naively optmistic even cynical journalists like ourselves could be. This man is the greatest threat to world peace and stability leading a nation today. He has no respect for international law(s), no respect for the intelligence of the American people (yes, Tim, he did lie!) and no respect for human life. He has lost America 2.3 million jobs in his three years of "stewardship." He has spent us, with his vengeful wars, back to a trillion dollar deficit. He has gutted education, the environment, and our basic civil liberties in a War on Terror that is beginning more and more to resemble the War on Drugs in its direction and effectiveness. He has sown fear and division here and abroad. Under His Fraudulency's watch, more and more Americans have become afraid to travel. He has made us bigger targets of disdain than we were during the Vietnam era and actually put targets on our backs, something that did not exist even then.
Over five hundred Americans have been killed and over 3,000 wounded in Iraq and Mr. Bush has declared victory. He has blood on his hands, the blood of Afghanis, Brits, Iraqis, Turks, Kurds, Australians and yes, Americans. Yet, he "perseveres" in the belief that he, George W. Bush, in his own words, is the "instrument of the Almighty."
Such hubris is more breathtaking even than that of Saddam Hussein.
One of the first people to write in with "Bottom Ten" nominees was WESLEY M., of an unspecified city in the USA. He wrote:
1. al qaeda
2. Bad Drivers
3. IRS
4. DEA
5. Customs
6. Religious Right
7. Left Extremist[s]
8. News
9. Radicals
10. Most any ambitious, person with an agenda to "Better our Lifes" or
"Bring their God closer to me" You know what keep it to yourself and leave
me and my right to do as I wish the fuck alone! As long as I am not hurting
you don't try and hurt me or mine.
LOU H-S, of CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND, sent us this list of nominees:
George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Saddam Hussien, Osma ben Laden, Tony Blair, John Howard, George Bush Snr, Mummar Gadaffi, Kim Jong II.
From ROBERT P., somewhere in PA, USA, came this note:
Hmmmmm:
9. Dr. Phil
8. Tom DeLay
7. Joe Lieberman
6. Charles Krauthammer
5. George Will
4. Don Rumsfeld
3. Dick Cheney
2. George W. Bush
1. The Liberal Media
GLEN C., another of those readers who write in without gracing us with a city or state but appears to live in the USA had to say:
Dear Rod,
GcSUE W., of an undesignated city in SOUTH AFRICA lamented the problems we had with the TOP TEN list and had this to say about the Bottom 10:
This is so much easier than the 10 best! How SAD!
Tony Blair - for the same thing
Corporate America - for exploitation of their own people and just about
everyone else
Ariel Sharon - where do you start - there's so much - but how about building
the WALL (not the 'fence' or the 'barrier' - the WALL, as in Berlin ... and
why is no one CALLING it this?)
Yassar Arafat for doing such a poor job of leading his people even though
they have the moral advantage and could press it home
Robert Mugabe - for exploiting his people and watching them starve while
building himself a palace, plus for not doing the world a favour by dying
even though he's old and sick when someone like Edward Said did at just 67
Milosevic - for not giving a shit for all the pain and suffering he caused,
and for resenting the fact that a guy like him can be called to account
of your world
IN JUDGEMENT
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TABLE OF CONTENTS & BACK ISSUESMWARA K'U of London, UNITED KINGDOM, shared these observations:
1. Anthony C L Blair - Because it's worse to abuse your intelligence by lowering yourself like that than it is to be stupid and user friendly like George.
2. George W. Bush Junior (It's now a humane act to wish him dead. President Daniel Arap Moi of Kenya could have learnt a lot from him about fostering ethnic discord, you wouldn't have thought he had any more to learn but he's been completely upstaged. What the world needs is to sit down and figure out how Julius Nyerere managed his feat of creating a genuine nation. Especially those of us just embarking on experiments in colonisation.)
3. All the capt
ains of British Industry who oversaw the privatisation of London Underground. Special mention for Francis Parkins, the lawyer who saw to it that the deal worked, then left LUL at once, and Tim O'Toole (hmm, formerly director of a freight train company in the States), now in charge of the Underground. I went on strike twice to prevent that privatisation. God must love me for it, cos I've not been on duty during any of the 3 derailments that have followed the deal. But still, I work on those platforms. It's me who stands by the track as trains rush past, knowing that the track is serviced by cheap eastern european labour who cant read and write English.
4. Me, for being lazy and not running for office anywhere to get someone useless out of it.
Mwara K., East Ham, London
9 - Saddam Hussein
8 - Osama bin Laden
7 - Kim Jong-Il
6 - Robert Mugabe
5 - John Ashcroft
4 - Ariel Sharon
3 - Donald Rumsfeld
2 - Tony Blair
1 - George W. Bush
Next, you'll get the opinions of the G21 Staff. What follows is a sampling of some of the writer responses and our "official" BOTTOM TEN LIST FOR 2003.
G21 STAFF PICKS (A Sample)
TIMOTHY M., who handles all the high-tech back-end stuff along with our Publisher and lives in Anaheim, CA, USA nominated the following folks:
John ASSchroft
Gray Davis
John Walters
Kim-Jong-il
Yasser Arafat
Islamic Jihad (as a group)
Hamas (as a group)
Al Queda (as a group)
New Orleans PD (a few of them anyway)
GW Bush (he lied)Hey there Rod
Gaynor
2. Tony Blair.
3. Ariel Sharon.
4. Robert Mugabe.
5. A big bunch of Indian politicians - too many to name here.
6. John Snow (US Treasury Secretary) - because IRS has not returned more
than $700 that it owes me, despite repeated appeals, the last of which was
addressed personally to Snow, mentioning the fact that I was more or less
unemployed and needed the money desperately.
7. My ex-boss, who is yet to pay all the money he owes me.
8. Another individual here, whom I would rather not name.
Herewith the "official" G21 BOTTOM TEN LIST FOR 2003:
9 - SADDAM HUSSEIN - If ever there was an example of a tyrant being both venal and pathetic, this guy is it. He allowed his own bellicosity and delusions of grandeur to drag his nation through two unwinnable wars with a vengeful superpower when there was no chance he could win either one. He forced them through international sanctions and the environmental destruction of the southern marshlands, the pollution of burning oil wells and U.S. deployed depleted uranium munitions --- not to mention starvation, torture and the leveling of one of the world's proudest and oldest cultures. He succeeded in earning his place in Hell long ago.
8 - YASSIR ARAFAT - Some people just don't recognize when their time has passed. Mr. Arafat has become more an obstruction to the realization of the dreams of Palestineans everywhere than a servant of their cause. By hamstringing the new Palestinean Prime Minister -- denuding him of real power by Arafat's maintaining control of the Palestinean Authority (security force) for himself and his inner circle -- he is holding onto power that is not legitimately his own any longer. He has raised himselff to the level of a monkey-wrench in the apparatus of peaceful resolution.
7 - TONY BLAIR - The British Prime Minister escaped being placed on this list for 2002 by a hair's breadth, but this time we simply couldn't ignore the overwhelming groundswell -- and the justifications for his inclusion -- we received from Mailing List Members and staff alike. When a man of his obvious intelligence takes the positions, especially as regards the actual existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction(WMD) in Iraq and Saddam Hussein's threat to world peace -- well, you can only take it as blatant cynicism of the highest order. Mr. Blair knows, as every British politician since Churchill has known, that the U.K. can only remain relevant, in Europe and the world, by being the handmaiden of the world's superpower. He embraces the role and leaves his conscience at 10 Downing Street.
6 - KIM JONG-IL - Way to go, Kim! Your the first of our returnees from last year! It's not enough that you have to starve your people to death in order to continue to threaten peace on the Korean peninsula, as we go to press word is you have enriched plutonium going on -- enough for at least five nuclear weapons. Must make you feel like a very Big Man. We'll have to admit one thing, though, having a nuke seems to be the way to get America to take you seriously without attacking your country. America only attacks countries that are incapable of waging a legitimate conventional war.
5 - THE WHITE HOUSE CHARACTER-ASSASSINATION SQUAD - We can't put a name to this crew yet because "journalist" Robert Novak should not be required to reveal his sources and there is no way John Ashcroft's Justice Department is ever going to expose their fellow travelers.
4 - RUPERT MURDOCH - Our take on Rupert at this writing is that he wants to be the world's William Randolph Hearst. He won't be happy until he can say he created his own war, a World War preferably. His mechanism for bringing this about is using his media empire to be the official propaganda organ(s) of any government willing to give him a footfall and a few regulatory breaks (including tax breaks) along the way. He had no problems in Britain or the United States in that regard. With any luck, he'll add DirecTV to his holdings, pick up a new satellite network soon and might be able to squeeze a few quid from the Saudi Royal family, as well.
3 - ARIEL SHARON - Welcome back, Prime Minister. We can't add to your list of perfidies covered in these and other pages over the last three years, so we won't try. How can you sleep?
SECOND RUNNER UP: ROBERT MUGABE moved up on our list as he continued his unrepentant rape of his country, persecuted his opposition and the farmers he is divesting, as well, and presides over a virutal reign of terror. Worse yet, he somehow manages to keep the concerns, laments and pleas of his fellow African leaders at bay. Most Western powers make "formal protests" and continue to let his despoil that sad land. As with many of his colleagues on this list, we'd gladly throw more brimstone on his fire.
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