The week’s reading, straight off the razor wire:

I’m inspired. To kill myself…

DISSIDENT’S TALE OF EPIC ESCAPE FROM IRAN’S VISE

WASHINGTON — After three days on the run, Ahmad Batebi picked his way down a rocky slope to the stream that marked Iran’s border with Iraq. His Kurdish guides, who had led Mr. Batebi, an Iranian dissident, through minefields and dodged nighttime gunfire from border guards, passed him to a new team of shadowy human smugglers.

At the age of 31, after nearly eight years in Iranian prisons, subjected to torture and twice taken to the gallows and fitted with a noose, Mr. Batebi had fled.

His awakening began in fourth grade, when his teacher, fed up with the distortions of an official history textbook, burst out: “Go out and read other things to try to get the truth.”

A few weeks later came the stoning. Though forbidden by his mother, he slipped out of the house to see the commotion near his school. He saw a man, accused of adultery, buried to the waist, his head covered with a sack that turned red as Revolutionary Guards hurled chunks of concrete. A mullah standing atop a wall gave the orders, and an ambivalent crowd of neighbors looked on.

—I have an idea. Let’s invade Iran and kill all the religious leaders. And hey, let’s get the “ambivalent neighbors” too. Has anyone thought of that?

Years later, he would witness public hangings and dismemberments. “But nothing had the impact of that stoning,” he said. “I thought, This can’t be Islam.”

—Oh, but it is. When my country tortures people, especially innocent ones, I think; “This can’t be America.” But it is.

Mr. Batebi described 17 months in solitary confinement, including repeated torture by interrogators trying to force him to say on television that the famous T-shirt was stained with paint or animal blood.

His jailers thrashed him with a metal cable, beat his testicles and kicked in his teeth, he said. They held his face down in a pool of excrement. They tied his arms behind his back and hung him from the ceiling. At other times, strapping him to a chair, they kept him awake night after night, cutting him and rubbing salt into the wounds.

To stave off madness, he said, he fought back. “If the interrogator cursed me, I would curse him back,” he said. “If the interrogator hit me, I’d try to hit him back.”

—Hey, now, that’s the wrong approach to getting tortured. You’re supposed to get all pliable and helpful. I’ll send you the manual.

The United Nations was arranging a placement in Sweden when Ms. Mazahery called to say that the United States had granted Mr. Batebi’s request for “humanitarian parole,” a relatively rare measure used in cases of danger or political importance.

When his flight from Vienna landed at Dulles Airport in Virginia in late June, Mr. Batebi was astonished to see that the airport worker waving the jet into the gate was a Muslim woman wearing a tight head scarf.

—You were astonished? To see a symbol of Islam? Huh. I’d think you’d be all like, “Oh, fuck, Islam! Noooooooo!”

Mr. Batebi speaks of working from afar for peaceful change in Iran. He recoils when asked about the possibility of American military action against Iran, saying that if the United States attacked, “I might go back and fight for my country myself.”

—Well, ok. But we’ll have to torture you first. You know the drill.

He has some ordinary goals, the dreams of a man who spent most of his 20s in a prison cell. He wants to study politics and sociology, he said, and work as a photojournalist. He wants to play guitar. He thought for a moment, then he remembered one more modest ambition.

“I want to fish!” Mr. Batebi said, his face relaxing into a smile. “I’m going to go fishing!”

—Oh, great. So you’re gonna throw a baited hook in the water, jam it into a fish’s mouth, yank him from his environment, club him to death, and eat him. Gonna try and get some information from him? Because he might get mad and just fight back to keep from going insane. This can’t be Islam.

The week’s reading, straight off the razor wire:

Makes it all seem worth it:

ATHLETES DISABLED BY WARS LEAD IRAQI TEAM IN WORLD GAMES

Iraqis love sports. Anyone who doubts it should consider the rat-a-tat of automatic weapons fired after every Iraqi soccer victory.

—Well, I’m not gonna doubt it unless they put the guns down. But maybe the shooting of the guns isn’t a good way to measure their enthusiasm. They seem to kind of do that whatever happens.

Yet after five years of war, Iraq’s chances of fielding a competitive Olympic team are vanishingly small.

—Give it time. When Head Drilling makes it out of the Special Olympics and into the big time, they’ll take the gold. Weird the Scots didn’t come up with that one.

And a blind athlete, Qasim Muttar, who was a promising player of goalball — soccer played with a ball that contains bells — died after being run over by an American convoy while crossing a street.

— Americans are notoriously competitive, you can tell by the missiles and bombs if you doubt it, and goalball is starting to really take off in America. Here they call it “Libertyball”, though.

The poverty that forced Rasul Kadhim to hawk nuts from an iron street cart in Sadr City, a Baghdad slum, as a child also paved his road to Beijing. In a story typical for the mostly poor, disabled men on his team, Mr. Kadhim, a weight lifter, sculptured his torso into pure muscle by pushing the 200-pound cart, though polio had paralyzed one of his legs. “I pushed the cart with only one leg,” he said. “But I always had the strength, the power.”
And in a sad twist, also not atypical, Mr. Kadhim’s older brother, who had inspired him to leave the cart and go into sports, was killed by a car bomb in 2006 on the same dusty street where Mr. Kadhim had worked.
“God willing, I will win a medal for Iraq,” he said.

—He’s shown himself to be pretty much on your side so far.

Two years ago, for example, all 18 members of the Olympic tae kwon do team were kidnapped and killed in Anbar Province in western Iraq while returning from a match.

—Ok, Ok, you guys love sports! Got it!

— Scot Crawford

AS TRUE
AS IT GETS
AS LONG
AS YOU GET IT

HAIL MARY!

In an effort to burnish his already resplendent environmental legacy, President Bush has initiated a full-scale propaganda campaign aimed at reducing global warming; smiling.

“Some people in this world seem to think that things are going bad,” said the President. “They like to complain. They’re like a bunch of Chicken Livers, running around saying, you know, the sky is comin’ down cuz a bomb fell on their head. But I’m an optimist. I believe in folks. I got my own version of that old saying; ‘let a smile be your umbrella.’ It goes like; ‘let a smile be your humvee.’ So we’re gonna put a stop to this whole global warming thing. And I have every confident that I can do this before the end of my presidency. Cuz, I’m not done. I’m gonna sprint for that door. So, we’re gonna turn them frowns upside the other way. Way I understand it, there’s too much sun gettin’ through makin’ things hotter than we want it, and folks are gettin’ discomfortable. So we’re just gonna ‘put on a smile and cheer up’, and shoot that sun back into space, as the song goes. Ever’body that goes to the dentist and gets them teeth polished up, gets a little present from the government; a hundred dollars. And I’ve instructed Congress to approve a bill that lets our police forces check on folks, see if they’re smiling. If they’re not, well, the Homeland Security folks are gonna know why. Except the Jews. They don’t wanna smile, they don’t have to.”

— Scot Crawford

The week’s reading, straight off the razor wire:

Yet more peace:

JAPANESE WARSHIP VISITS CHINESE PORT

A Japanese destroyer docked at a heavily guarded naval base in Guangdong Province on Tuesday for a five-day port call, the first by a warship from Japan in China since World War II.

Said Gao Hong, director of the political research office of the Chinese Academy of Social Science’s Japanese Research Institute:“When a naval vessel visits, it sends a clear signal that the countries have buried the hatchet and are working for peace.”

Breaking news:

JAPANESE PEACE ENVOY BOMBED

A group of diplomats and academics visiting China from Japan to try to ameliorate friction between the two countries over their long and violent histories was shelled today, apparently by a Japanese warship.

Said a spokesperson for the Chinese: “We don’t know what happened. The peace people came, and we were waiting, and then, suddenly, bombs were falling, shrapnel was flying, it was chaos.”

A spokesperson for the Japanese said that: “Signals got crossed. Mixed messages were sent. It was supposed to be a fireworks display to commemorate this historic event, and somehow, they ended up shelling our own peace envoy. We will not fail to shame ourselves for this mistake. There will be suicides, and at least one kamikaze will strike our ship.”

AS TRUE
AS IT GETS
AS LONG
AS YOU GET IT

NOW WHAT?

Following the spate of attacks in Iraq by female suicide bombers concealing bombs beneath their long, black, flowing “abayas”, the Iraqi Government has decreed that women should no longer be allowed to wear them. The decree sparked massive protests across the country from women who love their robes, and don’t feel comfortable in anything else, some claiming that they cannot reach “abayasm” without the heavy, concealing garment that women all over the world wish they could wear, if only their cultural mores permitted.

But the seemingly simple solution to an annoyingly simple problem has had an unforseen consequence.

Without the concealing abaya, several female suicide bombers have attacked at various locations across Iraq, wearing jeans and a halter. They just exploded.

Said a US Military spokesperson: “We figured with the Iraqi government saying, you know, ‘fuck this medieval, women and their concealing garments thing, it’s not like we can’t still sell them or rape them’, that would really make detecting a female suicide bomber way easier. Turns out, they’re just full of ball bearings and explosives. Those other bombers with the abayas may not have even had a bomb. They just went off. This is gonna really make things twisty around here. Where is my fucking coffee!? Hey!”

— Scot Crawford

…Help Michelle pass the media’s Goldilocks test — not too hot; not too cold; not too hard; not too soft, but “just right” — whatever the hell that is.

The week’s reading, straight off the razor wire:

Fair and Balanced:

IRAQ PUT HIS LIFE ON THE TRIGGER

BARDWELL, KY. — When Cody Alexander Morris returned from the war last fall, he carried home a burden — a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder — and a new way of playing with guns.

The gun game was called “Do You Trust Me?” Morris, 19, learned it from his Kentucky National Guard buddies in Iraq. He taught the game to his roommates: best friend and fellow guardsman Casey Lee Hall, 18, and a 16-year-old cousin, Cory Adams. The young men would point unloaded handguns at each other’s heads, ask “Do you trust me?” and pull the trigger.

Sometimes the guns came out while the teenagers drank alcohol, smoked marijuana and played violent video games. They called each other CWB, for “crazy white boy,” and had those three words tattooed on their necks.

“It fit us pretty good,” Morris said recently, “’cause we are crazy white boys. We were potheads — we’d just drink and smoke . . . and play-fight.”

But the carousing masked Morris’ troubled state.

—Um. Pretty thin mask. I guess if the game was called “I’m gonna blow your fucking head off”, alarms would have really gone off.

IRAQ WAR VETERAN WINS MR. CALIFORNIA USA PAGEANT

The new Mr. California USA’s girlfriend had a suitably fond comment after the gold crown was placed on his head.

“It’s really neat,” Yahira Rojo, 20, said when Jeremy Buraglia became the first recipient of the title. “It’s something new, but he’s been there before; we were the prom king and queen” in 2005.

The contestants are divided into four categories: Little Mr., ages 5 to 8; Junior Mr., from 9 to 12; Teen Mr. from 13 to 17; and Mr., ages 18 to 25.

—Next year they’re adding a few new categories: Mr. Deranged Sociopathic Murderer, Mr. Suicidal Depressive, Mr. Nightmares, and Mr. Convicted Felon.

— Scot Crawford

“

The week’s reading, straight off the razor wire:

On the floodgates opening:

US GENERAL APOLOGIZES FOR DESECRATION OF KORAN

BAGHDAD — The commander of United States troops in Baghdad asked local leaders and tribal sheiks this weekend for their forgiveness after the discovery that a soldier had used a Koran for target practice at a shooting range.

Also as a gesture of apology, another American officer kissed a Koran and gave it to the tribal leaders, according to news agency reports.

—Sadly, it turns out that kissing the Koran is forbidden by Islamic law, especially if the kisser is a member of a foreign occupying force, so the Iraqi leaders walked out in a snit. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has gotten involved and offered to let the Iraqis shoot at Bibles, or a Danish cartoonist, as compensation. Presidential-hopeful Barack Obama has derided these offers as appeasement.

A statement Sunday from the American military called the desecration of the Koran “serious and deeply troubling” and said the soldier had been disciplined and sent out of Iraq.

Breaking news from the Shackle Report:

KORAN DESECRATION OUTBREAK IN IRAQ

Following news that an American serviceman had been sent out of Iraq for desecrating the Koran, the Pentagon has reported that hundreds, if not every single one, of the American military members posted in Iraq are desecrating the Koran.

“It’s turned into something of a frenzy,” admitted the spokesman. “Our guys are pissing on them, defecating on them, kissing them, playing keep-away with neighborhood kids. We have to rethink the policy of posting them somewhere else as punishment.”

The Pentagon said that one possible new way of dealing with the problem is printing thousands of fake Korans expressly for the purpose of desecrating them, but Muslims are apparently touchy about that, too. Another is having American soldiers just shoot Iraqis to express their frustration with their mission.

— Scot Crawford

“

The week’s reading, straight off the razor wire:

hard times for us all:

MOST EXCLUSIVE MEN’S CLUB SEEKS TO CLEAR TREES FOR CASH

MONTE RIO, Calif. — At the end of the lane across the Russian River from this northwoods town, behind the “Keep Out” signs and the plainclothes security guards, lies Bohemian Grove, a mysterious summer playground of presidents, former presidents, princes, Cabinet members and titans of industry. The most exclusive men’s club in the world gathers each July for a secret conclave that begins with a nocturnal ceremony featuring torches, incantations, hooded robes of red velvet and the incineration of a coffin beneath a massive sculpture of an owl.

—Oh, the supreme court. I wondered what they did with their time off.

Which only deepens the dismay that has greeted the club’s request to the state of California for permission to log as much as 1 million board feet from the place to raise some cash.

—Like with most bohemians, cash is always a problem. And you can only chant to the gods for money for so long before they get pissy about it.

Club President Jay Mancini said that, like so much about the Bohemians, the effort to secure a non-industrial timber management plan is widely misunderstood: “We’re not secretive. We’re private…

—…but don’t tell anyone.”

“Good people in there to work for,” said a local carpenter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the value the club places on discretion. “They’re just in there having fun, like the rest of us do on our weekends, or on vacation…

—…this year we’re barbecuing my niece on Memorial Day weekend so the gods will stop the forest fires. She’s very excited. I’m Bob, by the way, I work for ‘Apocalypse Builders: Built to Last.’ We’re listed!”

Breaking news:

CALIFORNIA CARPENTER FOUND DEAD

Local police in Monte Rio California reported today that they had discovered the mutilated corpse of a local carpenter dangling from a redwood tree on property belonging to an organization called the Bohemian Club. Despite the grotesque, lurid nature of the crime, law enforcement officials said they had no leads, expected none to emerge and encouraged members of the press to just “let it go”, noting that since the time of Christ, carpenters have been found dangling from things routinely, so this event was hardly a story, especially in an election year.

Citing “emotional torture,” representatives of Louis Vuiton compared the use of their logo by 26-year-old Danish art student Nadia Plesner to thecartoon depictions of the prophet Mohammed by her countrymen in 2005 that prompted radical Islamist enforcers to issue death threats against artists and newspaper publishers. Pelsner’s drawing showed a starving child clutching a Vuiton bag and a Paris Hilton Chihuahua. She was trying to make a statement about social priorities and media indifference to Darfur.

Said the House of Vuitton, “Showing a starving black child holding one of our purses is like depicting the prophet eating pork out of the lap of a naked prostitute. It degrades the sanctity of our class brand, and makes a mockery of what we paid Tashaki Murakami for his divine pattern. She has defiled our corporate god, and must be dealt with accordingly.” Read Vuitton’s holy letter and Plesner’s sacriligious reply. And whenever you see a Vuitton bag from now on, think of Darfur.

“

The week’s reading, straight off the razor wire:

From the Washington Post on a wee out-sourcing snafu:

SOME WAR DEAD WERE CREMATED AT FACILITY HANDLING PETS

The U.S. military has, since 2001, cremated some of the remains of American service members killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere at a Delaware facility that also cremates pets, a practice that ended yesterday when the Pentagon banned the arrangement.

Officials said they do not know the number of service members cremated at the facility, which is identified on a billboard as Friends Forever Pet Cremation Service.

—PETA is suing.

From the Shackle Report:

HOUSING PROBLEMS IN HEAVEN

The Pentagon division that handles housing for the military has reported confusion at their temporary facilities at the gates of Heaven.

“Some of our outgoing heros have been mistakenly housed with dogs, terrorists, even Blackwater guys,” said Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Col. Patrick Gabriel. “We’re in the process of hiring an outside contractor to investigate what’s happening up there. Rest assured, the US military is fully committed to moving our soldiers from this earth to their eternal resting place in as dignified and expeditious a manner as possible.”

— Scot Crawford

“

The week’s reading, straight off the razor wire:

I’m in shock:

DESPITE ALERT, FLAWED WIRING STILL KILLS G.I.’s

In October 2004, the United States Army issued an urgent bulletin titled “The Unexpected Killer” to commanders across Iraq, warning them of a deadly new threat to American soldiers. Because of flawed electrical work by contractors, the bulletin stated, soldiers at American bases in Iraq had received severe electrical shocks, and some had even been electrocuted.

“We’ve had several shocks in showers and near misses here in Baghdad, as well as in other parts of the country,” Frank Trent, an expert with the Army Corps of Engineers, wrote in the bulletin. “As we install temporary and permanent power on our projects, we must ensure that we require contractors to properly ground electrical systems.”

—Maybe there are too many boots in the way.

The most recent fatality occurred on Jan. 2 in Baghdad, when a Green Beret died in a shower after an improperly grounded water pump short-circuited.

Breaking news from the Shackle Report:

GREEN BERET DIES A HERO, PENTAGON SAYS

The Pentagon today released a memo describing the combat death of a Green Beret:

“Al Qaeda has developed an insidious new tactic in their evil war on American forces trying to bring peace to Iraq; Accidental Shower Death, or what we like to call ‘ASD,’ or ‘Assed’,” said Pentagon spokesman Edwin D. Mendace. “They infiltrate our building contractors and sabotage the electrical wiring in our barracks. One of our heros today made the ultimate sacrifice defending our freedoms. There were other troops in that bathroom when he perished, and they survived the attacks when this soldier, while convulsing from electrical current pulsing through his body, threw himself on a bottle of Axe Body Spray - ‘Carnage Scent’, that could have had explosives in it. He will be missed.”

— Scot Crawford

The week’s reading, straight off the razor wire:

From Slate on an open book:

OBAMA GETS PERSONAL

With 96 hours to go before the voting starts in Indiana and North Carolina, Barack Obama is coming home. He’s talking about himself and his family, and he’s returning to his campaign’s bedrock theme of political reform.

By returning to his core message of bringing people together and changing the Washington system, Obama challenged his audiences to not get distracted by recent controversies. “This election is bigger than flag pins and sniper fire and the comments of a former pastor,” he said.

—”I’m not an elitist,” he went on to say. “I’m just above petty issues like patriotism, credentials, and the wisdom and judgement questions that arise from associating with hyper-religious wingnuts. And pandering. And politics. And you. Join me?”

— Scot Crawford

Scot Crawford writes:

From the Huffington Post about a girl who just can’t do anything right:

CLINTON GAS TAX HOLIDAY: HILLARY ATTACKS ECONOMISTS

UPDATE: Former Clinton labor secretary, and now Obama supporter, Robert Reich, asks some Clinton economic advisers about her comments this morning:

When asked this morning by ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos if she could name a single economist who backs her call for a gas tax holiday this summer, HRC said “I’m not going to put my lot in with economists.”

I know several of the economists who have been advising Senator Clinton, so I phoned them right after I heard this. I reached two of them. One hadn’t heard her remark and said he couldn’t believe she’d say it. The other had heard it and shrugged it off as “politics as usual.”

That’s the problem: Politics as usual. The gas tax holiday is small potatoes relative to everything else. But it’s so economically stupid (it would increase demand for gas and cause prices to rise, eliminating any benefit to consumers while costing the Treasury more than $9 billion, and generate more pollution) and silly (even if she won, HRC won’t be president this summer) is worrisome. That HRC now says she doesn’t care that what economists think is even more troubling.

—You know, I’m beginning to think there might be a tinge of misogyny behind all the flak Hillary takes. I’m not against her taking flak, because I love to see her scrap, but it’s beginning to seem almost kind of excessive.

The woman has guts. Yeah, the suspended gas tax is motivated by politics, but she’s a politician. Political motivation is almost kind of…what’s the word? Oh! Necessary! She’s not talking to economists and political gabbers, at that moment. She’s talking to people whose votes she’s courting, the pathetic panderer. Gore and Kerry both went down, deservedly, because they were eggheads that were too stupid to pander to lower-class people effectively. Bush won because he convinced lower class people that he wasn’t one of the elite. And in certain ways, he isn’t. No one feels that he’s talking down to them. I think Bush has contempt for everyone who isn’t him, but the ones who feel his contempt are educated, or at least smart. I think Gore has contempt for everyone who disagrees with him, but the ones who feel the contempt are less educated, or at least smart. I think Hillary has contempt for Bush and all far-right people, neo-cons especially, and I like to see it on her face when she listens to Bush speak. She looks like someone just put a turd on her dinner plate. They did. But Bush managed to get an education at the high-toned school he went to; in how to win an election. Hillary seems to be pandering pretty well so far, she’s still in. I fault her for some things, for example not finding a Karl Rove to be her advisor, because we need one.

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