the Shackle Report

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

FRIDAY

From the NY Times about another intelligence victory in the War on Terror:

RICE ADMITS U.S. UNDERESTIMATED HAMAS STRENGTH

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged Sunday that the United States had failed to understand the depth of hostility among Palestinians toward their longtime leaders.

— Did you try tapping their phones, or is that illegal in the advanced societies over there?

“I’ve asked why nobody saw it coming,” Ms. Rice said, speaking of her own staff. “It does say something about us not having a good enough pulse.”

— Maybe the lack of a heart is connected to that.

THURSDAY

This from the LA Times about one of our most ironically named weapons in the War on Terror:

CIA EXPANDS USE OF DRONES IN TERROR WAR

‘Targeted killing’ with missile-firing Predators is a way to hit Al Qaeda in remote areas, officials say…In February 2002, a Predator tracked and killed a tall man in flowing robes along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border with a Hellfire missile. The CIA believed it was firing at Bin Laden, but the victim turned out to be…

— Jesus.

WEDNESDAY

Some more crackpot revisionist history from those cranks at al Jazeera:

ANOTHER “PRE-EMPTIVE” WAR?

Iraq’s lesson

Some political analysts believe that Iran might ultimately seek nuclear weapons for self-defense. They point to nuclear-armed North Korea, which forced the U.S. to back off threats of invasion. Iran also learnt from Iraq’s lesson; if SADDAM had nuclear weapons, the U.S. wouldn’t have invaded his country.

But the truth is that Iran didn’t even threaten to attack Israel or the U.S. forces in the Gulf. In fact, the country sees itself threatened by the United States, Europe and Israel. The Iranians feel historically exploited and victimized by the great powers – and indeed, they were. In 1941, Britain and Soviets invaded Iran. This rarely mentioned part of WORLD WAR II was as criminal as Hitler’s 1939 invasion of Poland. In 1952, the United States and Britain overthrew Iran’s democratic government after it tried to take the national oil company away from British control. They installed their puppet, Shah Reza Pahlevi, who inflicted a reign of terror upon the Iranians. And In 1980, the U.S. and Britain planned SADDAM HUSSEIN’s invasion of Iran to crush its new revolutionary Islamic government. This war killed about one million Iranians.

— See, it’s the way you fundamentalist societies dwell on the past that’s your downfall.

TUESDAY

Reading Undernews we learned of this report from the Washington Times:

ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — A Muslim civil liberties group demanded an apology last week from the host of a Los Angeles-area radio show for making fun of a stampede that killed hundreds of Muslims during an annual pilgrimage. . .KFI-AM 640 host Bill Handel. . .reportedly made fun of the deaths . . .during a segment he called the “Annual Stampede Report.”

“The deaths of hundreds of people engaged in religious observances is no laughing matter,” said Sabiha Khan, the group’s spokeswoman.

— It’s the deaths of thousands of infidels that crack us up.

MONDAY

Was that a note of peevishness over at The New York Times last week?

Justice Scalia’s travel is part of a broader affliction on the federal bench. The Los Angeles Times reported in 2004, for example, that Justice Clarence Thomas had accepted thousands of dollars in gifts in recent years, including an $800 leather jacket, a $1,200 set of tires from Nascar and an extravagant vacation from a conservative activist. Federal judges below the Supreme Court level accept dozens of free vacations each year from well-heeled special interests under the guise of “judicial education.”

— Hey, if you’re gonna travel, you’re gonna need the wheels and the threads, man.

Kitty Lyons, the political Wankette whose “Secret Life” ran bimonthly at www.nerve.com between Monicagate and the Dawn of the Age of Terror, gets back in touch with herself and files this report. . .

I just wanked off to the video stream of the Alito hearings. Evidently, I, Kitty Lyons, am back in the figurative saddle.

As you may recall, I never had any trouble getting off on the news back in the Clinton years, or as they seem now in the midst of all this Bush, Bush, Bush, the Clinton MINUTES. News sex was so much better before politics started attacking sex pre-emptively.

Back then I was still married to Max, and he was still trying to become king of The New Documentary (in which, instead of being forced to admire how stoicly poor the poor are, you get to watch big companies you’re powerless to control being humiliated). Max would disagree, but I blame The New Documentary for ruining our marriage, because, in an effort to become nearly-famous like that guy who made “Super Size Me,” Max decided to drink nothing but Starbucks double lattes for a month. He not only blew up like a blimp, but also became mean. And my shrink wouldn’t let me blame either the abusiveness OR his affair with his camera-girl-woman-person on Starbucks. She (shrink) insisted that I hold him personally responsible, which, although it chewed up my heart like a dog toy, I eventually did.

The upshot of the divorce was that I got the loft, but without anything in it. So I had to get a new sofa and bid goodbye to the old red one that I used to wank off on while contemplating Frank Rich and Jesse Helms and Janet Reno . I went with a Lignet Rosset, because it looks very Wallpaper Magazine and folds out into a bed so I can subdivide, and live parasitically off the renters. Not exactly hard times, but the point is: My libido has been huddled in some undisclosed location ever since we re-attacked Iraq. It’s just so pathetic being divorced, American and old enough to remember Iran-Contra, my borders haven’t been feeling very open.

But there I was, C-Spanning Alito, wondering if I should go into business smuggling morning-after pills (I foresee numerous trips to France disguised as a tourist) when for reasons unclear to me, Mrs. Alito started to cry. I mean, she was crying HARD. Crying ON CAMERA, just like Walter Mondale did in ’72 or Pat Schroder in ’88. And then it hit me: Mrs. Alito is the sort of person who makes a lot of noise in bed.

Which means that if I slept with Sammy Alito, he’d let me make noise in bed too. He wouldn’t say “Shhhh, SHHH!!!” like that guy I dated just after the divorce. And he wouldn’t grab his camera and run out of the house like Max did whenever I started sniffling about his camera-girl-woman-person-twit-bitch. I could do so much more than cry with Sammy. I could sob and wail and beat the mattress, and touch myself under the duvet, and Sammy wouldn’t mind. He wouldn’t care if the reason I was crying was that his skin felt firm yet flabby at the same time. Or that I could taste the sweat on his Botoxic forhead. He wouldn’t care if I was crying because a bunch of judges were about to put women back in thrall to biology, or force me, Kitty Lyons, to get stuck raising Max’s baby if I had happened to have been pregnant when our marriage went South. No, here was a guy who would hold you, make love to you, say anything you wanted to hear, and just not care how hard you wept! He had a wall around him so thick I felt protected by it, sealed off, knowing he will never even try to understand what I feel. And I finally understood what total privacy really means, and I realized that with him, I will have it. And I came. And I cried.

Click here for next column,
"Brownnosing Michael"

Click here for the history of Kitty’s confessions of yesteryear, and here for “The Secret Life of Kitty Lyons” archive…

© Maggie Cutler all rights reserved.

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

TGI FRIDAY

Adam Nagourney and Janet Elder of The New York Times report:

NEW POLL FINDS MIXED SUPPORT FOR WIRETAPS

. .  .according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. .  . responses to questions about the administration’s eavesdropping program varied significantly depending on how the questions were worded. .  .

— Asked if they wanted Washington to finally start listening to them, 63% of those polled answered, “Duh, like, really.”

THURSDAY

From Al Jazeera.com

IRAQ BRACED FOR A DIVIDED FUTURE

According an editorial on UK’s Telegraph, senior U.S. military officers are referring to a civil war in Iraq as the “the subject of which we do not speak”.

— You know man, they even let us talk about priests boning chickens now. You could update.

WEDNESDAY

This from the LA Times:

TRIAL ILLUMINATES DARK TACTICS OF INTERROGATION

Interrogators at a makeshift prison in western Iraq, desperate to break suspected insurgents, would stuff them face-first into a sleeping bag with a small hole cut in the bottom for air.

The technique was not in the Army Field Manual, but Welshofer testified Thursday that he believed it was permitted after top commanders told interrogators “the gloves were coming off.”

— And you don’t need a manual to tell you, when the gloves come off, the sleeping bags go on.

TUESDAY

Some poetry from a weird one in the West:

Dear Allah-Ho-Akbar;

You are a complete fucking idiot. All you terrorists need to be smacked with shoes and then forced to eat pigs. Yum, I love bacon. Matter of fact, you are all pigs, you terrorist pussies. Show your faces. If you met me on the street I would guarantee I would beat your ass, because no greasy muslim could ever beat my ass. Pig on you! you are all pigs! hahahaha, yeah you will NEVER kill me. Fuck you pussy.

— Dude, you for pres. Wait, we already have you…

MONDAY

Some poetry from a weird one in the Middle East:

AND IN BAGHDAD BLOOD HAVE FLOWED

Any two eyes what is this alienation ? ! * * * and where the tears are from you and the weeping ؟ !

And how he tastes that vaccinated the sleep a lid * * * and in Baghdad blood have flowed

And in Baghdad the cries of the bereaved * * * it calls us and the affliction has prevailed

Then how much from a free laments a shyness * * * and about its sanctities the revelation of the cover

And around its tent she started beasts * * * and with the groans the tent has grumbled

And how much a child suffers he lost a mother * * * he calls it and the call has become hoarse

And how much from an afraid begs a salvation * * * and in his eyes the space has become narrow

As for to Allah and the Islam a soldier * * * as for to Allah in Alhiga Baraa [ 1 ]

If he strutted with the bliss and we do not care * * * to my age we and the more hostile ones whether

Osama Bin Abd Al-Aziz Al-Khaledi

— You guys, postmodernism is kind of retro. Though, we like retro ourselves sometimes. Like our whole imperialism thing seems kind of backward…

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

FRIDAY

From the NY Times on a new wrinkle in the War on Terror:

US REJECTS TRUCE OFFER FROM BIN LADEN

Mr. bin Laden offered the American people a vague truce, saying “both sides can enjoy security and stability under this truce so we can build Iraq and Afghanistan.” Later in the statement he quotes from a book which calls for an end to what he termed “American interference in the nations of the world.”

Mr. bin Laden’s message said his followers were not afraid of further American attacks because “a swimmer in the ocean does not fear the rain…”

—Oh, I’ll bet he does, what with the lightning and the increased chance of drowning. And anyway, there’s the sharks, and cramps, and Predator drones with Hellfire missiles to fret over.

THURSDAY

From the LA Times on our government’s light touch with privacy issues:

U.S. OBTAINS INTERNET USERS’ SEARCH RECORDS

SAN FRANCISCO — Federal investigators have obtained potentially billions of Internet search requests made by users of major websites run by Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and America Online Inc., raising concerns about how the massive data trove will be used.

The information turned over to Justice Department lawyers reveals a week’s worth of online queries from millions of Americans — the Internet Age equivalent of eavesdropping on their inner monologues. The subpoenaed data could, for example, include how many times people searched online for “apple pie recipes,” “movie tickets 90012″ or even “bomb instructions.”

The Internet companies said Thursday that the information did not violate their users’ privacy because the data did not include names or computer addresses.

Under a section of the Patriot Act expanding the use of so-called national security letters, companies such as Google can be asked to turn over potentially useful data — even about people who aren’t suspected of wrongdoing — while being barred from disclosing those requests.

“We’re not seeking any individual information regarding anybody who entered the query terms,” [Justice Dept. spokesman] Miller said.

He did not respond to other questions, including whether the department would rule out seeking such information in the future and how the existing data would be used.

Google said, though, that the words in a single text query could lead the government to a searcher’s identity.

—Yeah, I just queried “kill + George Bush + how?” and…Hey, how did you get in here? HEY!

WEDNESDAY

From physorg.com on why women have a ways to go before they run things:

REVENGE: WHY MEN ARE BETTER AT IT THAN WOMEN

Fairness, empathy and retribution are fundamental drivers of society, helping to shape laws, the judicial systems to carry them out and individual relationships too. But where do these powerful forces come from?

Neuroscientists at University College London believe they have found evidence in the brain which helps answer this question…In males and females alike, MRI images showed activation of the anterior insula/fronto-insular cortex (AI/FI) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Previous research has showed that these parts of the brain cause the feeling of distress when one sees someone else in pain.

But, when a bad person got punished, the AI/FI and ACC lit up again among most female volunteers…Amongst the men, however, these empathic areas showed no increase in activity…what was activated in a big way in men, though, was the nucleus accumbens, the part of the brain associated with the satisfaction of reward. This activation was not seen in most female volunteers.

—Take a memo Hillary. You start with pulling the wings off an annoying insect while giggling. Then, in no time you’re doling out Palestinian hangings while inflating threats and lying to the world. You can do it.

TUESDAY

From USA Today:

PENTAGON TO FAMILIES: GO AHEAD, LAUGH.

“I laugh every chance I get,” says the instructor, retired Army colonel James
“Scotty” Scott. “That’s why I’m blessed to be at the Pentagon, where we definitely
need a lot of laughter in our lives.”

“With help from the Pentagon’s chief laughter instructor, families of National Guard
members are learning to walk like a penguin, laugh like a lion and blurt “ha, ha,
hee, hee and ho, ho.”

Scott, 57, is certified as a laughter training specialist by the Ohio-based World
Laughter Tour, a group that promotes mirth as medicine. It touts scientific research
that suggests chuckling can boost the body’s immune system and decrease stress
hormones.

— It’s like armor, only cheaper. Ha ha, hee hee, ho ho.

MONDAY

Some good news on the reconstruction effort from the Iraqi online newspaper Azzaman:

WORK ON BASRA HOUSING PROJECTS STARTS

Work on a large project has started in the southern city of Basra, declared Makki Hamad Ghali, Basra’s housing director.

The housing complexes will have their own primary and secondary schools, shopping centers, car parks, a mosque and a football stadium.

He said the first stage of the projects had started and hoped the construction will send a signal to the tight housing market that the government is determined to solve the housing crisis.

—And who better to solve crises than the government?

Minnesota, sheesh. First came the incendiary reign of governor Jesse Ventura, whose libertarian bona fides included an unapologetic defense of legalizing prostitution. Now, after a boring interlude under the governance of Tim Pawlenty, a man given to business-y ‘principles’ like, “…measure results, and use the outcomes to guide decisions and direct our work…”

Minnesota is ready once again for a candidate with something between his legs, even though that something appears to be Satan’s sword. As Boing Boing divulges in its recent report, “Satanist Runs for Governor of Minnesota”:

Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Jonathan Sharkey prefers to be known as “the Impaler”.

Well, who doesn’t? But Sharkey’s website tells us much more about him than we want to know, including this:

In August 1988, while visiting a relative, I met a girl who was totally taken by me and who I was. (sic) She was hott (sic) and sexy, so I drove her home that night on my bike, and slept with her. Though I do not regret sleeping with her, in 1996 I found that she was my half-sister who (sic) I hadn’t seen since 1970.

The Impaler is running on the VWP ticket, which stands for: Vampyres, Witches and Pagans, a party of his own devising.

Odds are, the prospect of a devil worshipper in the governor’s mansion will do far more to promote the separation between church and state than Ventura’s famous 1999 Playboy interview, in which he postulated that:

Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers.

You can hear Ventura, still defending our freedoms, here: Freedom now!

Okay, this born-again kid, Trevor Corneliusen, goes on one of his regular winter treks to the Mojave where he camps in an abandoned silver mine. Reports his mother, through the medium of the LA Times:

“It’s somewhat a religious experience what he does there. He meditates. He communes with God in the desert.”

Straightforward so far, but now it gets mysterious: Somehow in the midst of his religious musings, Corneliusen chains up his ankles, locks the chain with a Master Lock (TM) padlock and makes a pencil drawing of his shackled legs. He then realizes that he has totally lost the key. With baby-steps and hops, he stumbles along for miles over rocky terrain until he reaches Baker, CA, where a firefighter cuts him loose.

There are, as you can see, many unexplained aspects of this uplifting story. The first three that come to mind are:

1. Did this artist lose the key to his shackles due to some sort of divine intervention?
2. Does climbing into a deep hole to talk to God bring on humiliations one might have avoided?” ?
3. If there is a God, why didn’t He show Corneliusen how to make himself a vibrating lockpick out of an Oral-B toothbrush, like this one featured on Boing Boing?

We may never know The Answer.

AS TRUE
AS IT GETS
AND AS LONG
AS YOU GET IT

NABBED!

Tel Aviv, Israel – Mossad, the Israeli Secret Service, announced today that it has concluded an intense investigation based upon allegations that there was a Jewish conspiracy behind Ariel Sharon’s recent stroke.

“We were very concerned when these allegations first arose, because as everyone knows, Jews are often accused of being behind conspiracies throughout the world, notably the Sept. 11 attacks on NYC,” said Ishmael Abraham, the head of Mossad. “We have to take all allegations of conspiracy very seriously.”

The investigation, kept secret throughout the last few days after Mr. Sharon’s debilitating stroke, took Mossad agents through the underbelly of Israel’s political world, often resulting in the agents spending long periods in shadowy places, disguising themselves as Jews in black hats and coats, and even eavesdropping on the faithful whispering their prayers at the Western Wall.

“We found,” said Mr. Abraham, “to our surprise, that the allegations were true. The evidence has led us to the conclusion that it was the Jews who were behind the dastardly crime.”

The irony is that Mr. Sharon, who is often quoted as saying “The Jews are not easy people,” was more right than he knew: Mossad has concluded that the sheer difficulty of the Jewish people was the primary cause of Mr. Sharon’s stroke.

“This will not go unpunished,” said Mr. Abraham. “The Jews will be hunted down and brought to justice.”

— Scot Crawford

“It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily,” said Marlene Dietrich’s seductress in Shanghai Express. And no doubt it did. But here at the Shackle Report, changing our name was a simpler and quicker, if less lubricious process. We just went and swapped our old prefix, “Crawford & Cutler’s” for a snappier, yet more anonymous “the”.

So, if you have subscribed to our feed using feedburner, please re-subscribe. Here’s the new URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/theShackleReport.

We feel much lighter for the change, and the act of re-naming ourselves brings us closer to our guru, Houdini, and to the principles of escapology and self-creation he embodies. He changed his birth name, Ehrich Weiss, to Harry Houdini, and married a woman who had changed her birth name, Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahmer, to Bessie Raymond (before becoming Bess Houdini). Also: The famous French magician whose name Houdini appropriated, Robert-Houdin, re-named himself. He was born Jean Eugene Robert in 1805 but added the surname of his wife, Josephe Cecile Houdin, to the end of his own for his stage act. Patriarchy takes a hit.

Well, okay, you’re not. But now at least you’re free to comment on our posts.

All you have to do is register. Just click in the last box on the left where it says “Register” and give us some info. Your name doesn’t have to be real, but your e-mail does. We promise not to share any of your info with anyone.

We can’t speak for the NSA.

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

FRIDAY

Something from the Arab News about the gender gap in Saudi Arabia:

When you have groups of 15-25 year old boys doing nothing every day but watching TV, playing games, and cruising the streets, there is hardly any time left to do research.

As if any of them had any idea how to do research in the first place. And believe it or not, it is for this reason that you find girls are more innovative then boys; not being able to drive and roam the streets is somewhat of a blessing in disguise for them.

“I know what the advantages of women driving are and I agree with all the arguments, but it is not enough. What I know is the way I feel when my daughter tells me she wants to drive her own car like her brothers one day. I can’t help it; I panic when I think what might happen to her,” says Saudi father, “Tamer”.

—Well, put down the chair and the whip, and let’s talk about it…

THURSDAY

From The Scotsman.com about a new front in the culture wars:

CHINESE CHIP IN WITH CLAIM TO GOLF

Professor Ling Hongling, of Lanzhou University, claims to have uncovered evidence of golf being played in China in AD 945 in a book called the Dongxuan Records written during the Song Dynasty (AD960-1279)…According to Prof Ling, golf only arrived in Scotland after it was exported to Europe by Mongolian travellers during the late Middle Ages.

—I don’t care. I just rike to pray gorf.

WEDNESDAY

This from the NY Times about the Jews and their quirky traditions…

…now, with the NYC mayoral election over, the city’s Health Department, while not banning the procedure, is angering Hasidic leaders just the same by pushing a public health campaign against the rite, in which the practitioner, or mohel, sucks the blood from the circumcision wound to clean it. The department took the action after linking the rite to additional cases of herpes in infants, one of whom suffered brain damage as a result.

— Okay, using God to justify blowing babies. I’ve changed my mind: Go Hamas.

TUESDAY

And this from the Iraqi online newspaper Azzaman:

IRAQ’S POPULATION SOARS TO 28 MILLION

—Now you see the why the US doesn’t bother with body counts.

MONDAY

Here’s this from the Washington Post about Wal-Mart’s racial. . . ah, what’s the word? Insensitivity. . .?

WAL-MART WEB SITE MAKES RACIAL CONNECTIONS

When visitors to Walmart.com requested “Planet of the Apes: The Complete TV Series” on DVD, four other movies were recommended under the heading “Similar Items.” Those films included “Martin Luther King: I Have A Dream/Assassination of MLK” and “Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson”

…similar titles were called up when the DVD of the movie “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” was requested…

Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart said in a written statement that it removed the combinations at 6:30 p.m. Eastern time. By last evening, “Planet of the Apes” was linked to DVDs of the fifth season of the CBS comedy “Everybody Loves Raymond” and the 10th season of the NBC hit “Friends.”

— As a white man, I find it offensive to have a movie about blacks linked to icons of white culture like “Everybody Loves Raymond” and “Friends.”

AS TRUE
AS IT GETS
AND AS LONG
AS YOU GET IT

IN DIPLOMATIC STRIKE, ITALY RETURNS MAFIA TO SICILY

ROME, ITALY — Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi announced today that in retribution for recent assaults on Italy’s national honor by the US, he would bring the American mafia back to Italy, even the Gotti family.

“The United States has repeatedly thumbed its nose at the honor and pride of the Italian people. They have murdered our intelligence agents in Iraq. They have attacked our ski resorts with their military jets. They have destroyed operations by our intelligence services on Italian soil with their own CIA. Their CIA agents have even driven their vehicles down our pedestrian walkways. Therefore, we have deemed it necessary to bring home all of our organized crime personnel. Let the United States manufacture its own cement shoes. Trust me, the quality will not be there.”

US officials denied that they have dishonored Italy as a nation, and expressed concern that the departure of the mafia from the United States could undermine the economy, rob Hollywood of substantial narrative lines, and drastically alter the power structure within the nation’s prison system.

“It would be a massive blow,” said one State Department official. “This is like the Russians taking back their mafia, or the US regifting the Statue of Liberty. We are not taking this lightly. Some extremists in Congress have even talked of stopping our policy of revenge-based worldwide military aggression. Does anyone really want that? Dumb wops.”

— Scot Crawford

1. BEST NEW DEITY
The Flying Spaghetti Monster, a creation of Bobby Henderson, (along with this popular visualization by Niklas Jansson and Michaelangelo) has attracted a large, devout following from a coveted demographic of the Internet’s first responders. Unlike the mainstream deities, who have done little to beat back the barbarians of fundamentalimpairment, the FSM has balls: Meatballs, no less. When Henderson wrote the Kansas Board of Ed demanding that the creation of the world by FSM be taught along with “Intelligent Design,” even we at the Shackle Report were “touched by his noodly appendage.”

2. BEST USE OF THE WORD “INANITY”
Before Judge John E. Jones III ruled that the Dover School Board could not legally insert Intelligent Design dogma into a publicly funded science class, the words “breathtaking” and “inanity” rarely mated. Now it’s hard to imagine the two apart.

3. BEST NAME FOR A MYSOGYNISTIC, HOMOPHOBIC POPE
Rat-zinger. Although South Park may have pushed him up a notch with its “Bloody “Mary” episode which had been skedded to air Dec.7th. As the Defamer wrote:

Perhaps the most outrageous and offensive South Park episode of all time (and that’s really saying something), “Bloody Mary,” which first aired Dec. 7 as this season’s finale, was pulled from the network schedule last night.
Its plot involves a statue of the Virgin Mary, which appears to be miraculously bleeding from its rectum. Pope Benedict XVI is called in to investigate, and upon discovering the statue is instead hemorrhaging from its vagina, says, ahem, “A chick bleeding out her vagina is no miracle. Chicks bleed out their vaginas all the time.” . . .
Somewhat predictably, the Catholic League. . . demanded an apology from Viacom, Comedy Central’s parent company, to Roman Catholics everywhere and “a pledge that this episode be permanently retired and not be made available on DVD.”

. . .His name now is:
“Pope Run-That-Video-Again-and-I’ll-Wax-Limbo“

— Maggie Cutler

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

FRIDAY

Al Jazeera weighs in on the lightning-quick reconstruction of Iraq:

WASHINGTON GOES BACK ON ITS WORDS, REFUSES TO REBUILD IRAQ

America’s WAR to bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqi nation has only resulted in creating a society so paralyzed that it is incapable of even burying its dead- The disposal of corpses has been left to packs of wild dogs and swarms of flies, animal feed mixed with seawater has become the only food available to some.

— Be careful with the animal feed. You could get mad cow disease.

THURSDAY

Here’s this from the NY Times about redirecting Dept. of Homeland Security money toward places likely to be attacked:

NEW RULES SET FOR GIVING OUT ANTITERROR AID

Facing cuts in antiterrorism financing, the Department of Homeland Security plans to announce today that it will evaluate new requests for money from an $800 million aid program for cities based less on politics and more on assessments of where terrorists are likely to strike and potentially cause the greatest damage… Examples [of poorly spent money] cited in recent testimony to Congress include $557,400 awarded to North Pole, Alaska, a city of about 1,700 residents, to buy rescue and communications equipment…

— Well, we have to protect Santa’s house. It was buying new levees for Denver that really seemed unreasonable.

“We certainly are much smaller than a city like New York or Los Angeles,” said Don Thorson, administrator for the grant program in Omaha. But, Mr. Thorson said: “We still are an urban area. And we still have risks. No one can predict where a terrorist might strike. Look where Timothy McVeigh struck. It was Oklahoma City.”

— Dude, Oklahoma City was the Jews.

WEDNESDAY

Here’s an alliance no one saw coming:

IRAQI RESISTANCE DELIVERS JUSTICE FOR RED INDIANS

An article in the Iraqi Azzaman newspaper suggests that the souls of Red Indians murdered by the forefathers of today‘s Americans “now greet with joy what is happening to America in IRAQ“. The growing U.S. death toll in IRAQ, and the mounting opposition to the WAR suggest that the Americans will ultimately be defeated. Iraqis fighting the U.S. occupation shall never assume that the Americans are superhuman, or that the United States is a land from outer space.

— Oh, no? Where did Mount Rushmore come from then, huh?

TUESDAY

On our boys in the CIA winning the hearts and minds of our European allies:

In the days surrounding their [CIA operatives]abduction of the radical Egyptian cleric on a Milan street nearly three years ago, they chatted openly on their cellular phones, ran up huge bills at luxury hotels and even managed to let their rental cars be photographed by traffic cameras as they drove illegally through pedestrian walkways…Italian prosecutors have tried to broaden the prosecution of his captors. But. . .

“In a certain sense, Italians expect Italy to be taken for granted,” said Giuseppe Cucchi, a retired army general. Cucchi, who for years was Italy’s military representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, pointed to two incidents in recent years that fostered this belief:
A senior Italian intelligence agent was killed by American troops in Iraq this year at a checkpoint shooting; the U.S. government cleared its officers of any wrongdoing, despite Italian objections.
In 1998, a U.S. Marine pilot severed the cables of a ski gondola in northern Italy, killing 20 people; the Americans cleared their personnel of wrongdoing.

— Capiche?

MONDAY

And re: the recent huge uptick in gas and oil prices in Iraq:

Over the summer, gas was selling for about 5 cents a gallon. Now it’s about 65 cents, and at the end of the price increases, gasoline will cost about the same in Iraq as it does in other countries in the Persian Gulf, about $1 per gallon…Iraqis had gone from “hopeful, to sudden panic and sorrow again…I think Iraqis have lost trust in their government.”

— Ah. Day Two: Iraqis lose trust in their government. Time for a regime change…

Though [Iraqi gas prices] may seem cheap to Americans, wages in Iraq are far below those in the United States. Employees in government ministries, for example, earn about $130 a month on average, putting them among the top earners in Iraq. Millions of other Iraqis live in poverty, relying on food handouts from the government. About a fourth of all Iraqi households subsist on less than $1 a day…Iraqi families rich and poor still get monthly food baskets. Iraqi and U.S. officials would like to replace the program with an ordinary welfare system that provides benefits for those living in poverty.

— Welfare? We’re exporting socialism, too Why wasn’t I informed of this?

— Scot Crawford

4. THE BEST IRONIC SHOPPING LIST
The Nation’s Tom Englehardt began the year with a piece on the mutually complimentary roles of torture and militarism in 21st century America that was so pessimistic — yet accurate — it made you want to go snorkle in Belize just to get away from your pain. But he mercifully ended the year by posting Nick Turse’s convulsively amusing shopping list for sardonic lefties. The list includes:

. . .“Ghrab” a Few of These for Your Friends…
Feeling expansive? Here’s a shirt that seems to evoke both marquee sites in the American gulag (Gitmo and Abu Ghraib) — “The Koran: Now in Two-Ply,” with the image of a guy, pants down, seated on a toilet, holding the Muslim holy book and giving a thumbs-up worthy of America’s most famous soldiers, . . .or the tasteful “I Got Humped at Abu Ghraib Prison.”

5. BEST SYMBOL OF THE AGE
The feeding tube. As unresponsive to the public mood as a girl in a coma, the Republican congress tried to pass a law to keep Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube in her gullet, claiming that her husband’s description of her wishes in the matter were unreliable.

US detainees in Guantanamo Bay, although fully conscious, had no better luck in persuading Republican America to let them decide their fate.

But art blooms where politics moulders, and cartoonist David Rees created from the humble feeding tube the year’s most altruistic cartoon character.

6. THE BEST WELL-INTENTIONED VIDEO-GAME
For those tired of being force-fed ultraviolence by media droogs, there was Feed Force — the runaway new videogame put out by the United Nations World Food Program that the NY Times unaccountably described as a “cult hit,” presumably because its success surprised them:

No one shoots anyone in Food Force. Rebels are negotiated with, not blown away, and the women are sensibly dressed aid professionals – although one character does greatly resemble Lara Croft in Tomb Raider. Yet Food Force has quickly become the second most downloaded free Internet game, after the Army’s recruiting tool, America’s Army.

It might tell us something about our culture that neither the Lara Croft series — which enjoins boys to identify with a babe bearing humungous, rock-hard tits — nor a combat-training game for teens, struck anyone as the slightest bit cultish.

— Maggie Cutler

The is the second in a four-part mini-series about the top ten (or so) people, issues, events and playthings that floated to the top in our Ninth Ward last year. . .

7. THE BEST PROOF OF AMERICAN SUPERIORITY
CNNNN’s “On-The-Streets-Of-America” video. When you get tired of blaming America’s leaders for lawless aggression and clueless strategies and feel like blaming the voters instead, this is the media tid-bit to get you in the mood. In it, CNNNN does man-in-the-street interviews with all sorts of Americans who seem ready to bomb the bejesus out of just about every nation on earth . . . if only they could find those nations on a map. Is it for real? CNNNN is sort of Australia's version of The Daily Show, so maybe not.

7. BEST ADMINISTRATION SCANDAL
The Plame Affair, because seeing members of the hard left protest the exposure of a CIA agent’s identity helped us all distinguish Iraq from Vietnam (or should have).

9. BEST (AND ONLY) DEMONSTRATION USING SHACKLES AS A THEME
. . .took place last September in Birmingham, England, at the Hiatt factory that makes shackles for Guantanamo Bay Prison. Mark Thomas, often called “the British Michael Moore,” and Gitmo detainee lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, along with with political folk band ‘Seize the Day’, wore orange jumpsuits and Hiatt brand shackles while performing “Do the Shackle Shuffle at Camp X-Ray.” The point was to protest abusive treatment of detainees at Gitmo and to support Smith’s hunger striking clients.

Tomorrow. . . the top 4, 5 and 6.

— Maggie Cutler

The is the first in a four-part mini-series about the top ten (or so) people, issues, events and playthings that floated to the top in our Ninth Ward last year. Starting at the back end. . .

10. THE BEST REASON TO SCRAP YOUR CATBOX

Maukie!

Maukie the Internet Pet does numerous endearing things and never gets ear mites.

Turn up your audio and roll your cursor over Maukie’s forhead, rest it below the white patch on chest, swipe it below paws, overhead and. . .well, you’ve got it by now: Everything your president has been asking for — total control. What more could you want in the way of democracy?

And Here are Five Runners up:

11. BEST RIGHT WING NUT JOB
Senator John McCain showed you could be:

1. principled,
2. humane,
3. sensitive to international opinion

. . .and still think a fetus is as much a person as Condoleeza Rice.

12. BEST PLAGUE
Bedbugs invade Manhattan’s tony Upper East and West Sides. Unlike bird flu, they actually arrived. Unlike anthrax or that strangely catching disease called Fundamentalism, they promise to torment us without robbing us of our basic freedoms, including the freedom to scratch.

13. BEST FAST FOOD/GAS
Even more important than eating green tacos and driving to work without enriching one of Osama’s royal relatives, is culturally cleansing green culture for the NASCAR crowd, which means sandblasting away environmentalism’s aura of effete self-righteousness. The Chipotle Mexican take-out chain, although it would look at home in a mega-mall and is 92% owned by McDonald’s, uses Niman Ranch “naturally raised” pork, meaning they don’t torture their pigs before turning them into burritos. Willie Nelson’s biofuel company, BioWillie, may not be the answer to global warming, but it at least its gas pumps aren’t designed by the West Elm gang, and it asks the question, “Why burn fossils?” in a much homier way than, say, 2,000 dead soldiers.

14. BEST CELEBRITY INCARCERATION
Yes, Martha Stewart made a comeback from legal disgrace, but that was something even Lizzie “It was an accident!” Grubman more-or-less managed. The reason Stewart tops the comeback charts this year is because — like the equally elegant Nelson Mandela — she managed to merchandise both her incarceration and her release. Top that, Li’l Kim.

15. BEST VIDEOGAME CHEAT
“Prostitutes pay you” from Grand Theft Auto — San Andreas. In Pimp Mode 2, it’s RIGHT, WHITE, WHITE, DOWN, WHITE, UP, UP, WHITE, BLACK. Got that? Or, if you’re not a playa, you can always cheat to attain “No Muscle and No Fat” with Y, UP, UP, LEFT, RIGHT, X, B, RIGHT. So now you won’t need to go out and buy “Grand Theft Auto XII — South Beach, the Lo-Carb Challenge.”

Tomorrow. . . the top 7, 8 and 9.

— Maggie Cutler