the Shackle Report

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

FRIDAY

From the Washington Post about the importance of family values:

WHERE PROSTITUTES ALSO FIGHT AIDS

Brazil’s Sex Workers Hand Out Condoms, Crossing U.S. Ideological Line

Duran, 35, is a prostitute in Villa Mimosa, a red-light district in this seaside city where an estimated 3,500 sex workers lounge in the doorways and lean out the windows of scarred, decaying buildings.

— I am so there.

THURSDAY

From the NY Times about safety first:

PRISONS OFTEN SHACKLE PREGNANT INMATES IN LABOR

Shawanna Nelson, a prisoner at the McPherson Unit in Newport, Ark., had been in labor for more than 12 hours when she arrived at Newport Hospital on Sept. 20, 2003. Ms. Nelson, whose legs were shackled together and who had been given nothing stronger than Tylenol all day, begged, according to court papers, to have the shackles removed.

“Though these are pregnant women,” said Dina Tyler, a spokeswoman for the Arkansas Department of Corrections, “they are still convicted felons, and sometimes violent in nature. There have been instances when we’ve had a female inmate try to hurt hospital staff during delivery.”

— Yes. One woman beat her doctor to death with her new-born baby, which is a lousy way to go. I wonder what they do to her if the woman wants an abortion, rather than suckle the divine burden of a jailhouse baby? Pummel her with sticks and scream passages from the Bible during the procedure?

WEDNESDAY

Yet another turn for the worse from the Scotsman:

SCOTS SUPER-REGIMENT TO BE KITTED OUT IN FOREIGN KILTS

THE British Army has lowered the standards required of ceremonial kilts for the new amalgamated Scots regiment so that they may be manufactured from cheap tartan made abroad, a move critics say could lead to poorly made outfits.

“The kilts are clearly going to be sub-standard. Now there will be different cuts and shades on parades and it will be an embarrassment. The ceremonial Scottish wear of kilts and trews should absolutely be made in Scotland.”

An MoD spokesman insisted that the changes have been made in order to provide best value for the UK taxpayer and added that the new worsted fabric would be less “fluffy” in appearance.

— Maybe that’s ok. Fluffy isn’t really in anymore. And in the War on Terror, we need a sleeker, more agile fighting force.

TUESDAY

From the BBC about the last thing they needed in the Sudan:

SUDAN MAN FORCED TO ‘MARRY’ GOAT

A Sudanese man has been forced to take a goat as his “wife”, after he was caught having sex with the animal.

The goat’s owner, Mr Alifi, said he surprised the man with his goat and took him to a council of elders.

They ordered the man, Mr Tombe, to pay a dowry of 15,000 Sudanese dinars ($50) to Mr Alifi.

“We have given him the goat, and as far as we know they are still together,” Mr Alifi said.

Mr Alifi, Hai Malakal in Upper Nile State, told the Juba Post newspaper that he heard a loud noise around midnight on 13 February and immediately rushed outside to find Mr Tombe with his goat.

“When I asked him: ‘What are you doing there?’, he fell off the back of the goat, so I captured and tied him up”.

Mr Alifi then called elders to decide how to deal with the case.

“They said I should not take him to the police, but rather let him pay a dowry for my goat because he used it as his wife,” Mr Alifi told the newspaper.

— Now, if it were a woman caught doing this, they’d stone her, and then tip a wall over on her. And I guess the abstinence method of controlling promiscuity to slow HIV is working well. Oh, and how will this effect the mighty efforts the US is making to stop the genocide? Myself, I feel a little less inclined to intervene, now.

MONDAY

A conversation between al Jazeera readers about the destruction of an important Shia mosque in Iraq, demonstrating what happens to the public discourse when the democratic force of the Internet is brought to bear:

i am actually quite happy to see a jeehad school destroyed. the world must focus it’s efforts on ensuring that this jeehad is squished. what most people don’t realize is it is this religeon that is the problem.

— kate from denmark

kate – obviously u adn ppl like u the cause of the world’s current situation. people like you who are arrogant. surely you will die anyday, any moment, and will surely see what is next waiting for you. just enjoy now because later you will not be able to. good luck.

— khan from uk

i apologise for that rash comment earlier,i was roasted last night and got the dp treatment,i am sore as hell and it looks like it is playing on my emotions,once again i apologise and next time i will use some lube.

— kate from denmark

kate from denmark, u should not be say ing anything. u need to learn first what is juhad, doesnt not mean killing ppl, dont follow media blindly.

— haris from uk

my backside is killing me,i cannot walk,i knew i should have used lube,this is what you get when you sell yourself,you have to take the pain to get the good money,and if it means dp ,then gimme the money,if anyone is interested, catch the tube to eustone , and then come to the euston square hotel london,room 214, l be waiting,and bring some lube and plenty of money because i want the good pain.

— kate from denmark

—Hey everybody, that address in London turns out to be bogus.

This is the fourth in a series of special reports by Scot Crawford on the Rumsfeld interrogation protocols in action.

Click here to read the introduction

GOING GITMO PART IV: BISCUITS FROM SCRATCH

In the Going Gitmo series, the Shackle Report is exploiting the “travocities” going on at Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility. “Travocity” is a combination of travesty and atrocity, the key features of US detainee policies as reported most recently by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker February 27, 2006, and by Gitmo lawyer, Thomas Wilner in The Los Angeles Times.

BACKSTORY:

In Part III of this series, “Lights Out”, we met Doctor Duress (DD), the leader of the BISCUITs (Behavioral Science Consultation Team) who was sent to Gitmo to assist in interrogating detainees. After learning that a recalcitrant prisoner is afraid of the dark, Duress had the penetrating idea of turning out the lights in the prisoner’s cell. Impressed with DD’s ingenuity, the IO (Interrogating Officer) has taken the doctor’s suggestion and gone off to breakfast with him, leaving a Pfc to guard the detainee.

Scene:
The full BISCUIT team has now arrived and they are about to continue the interrogation. They are standing outside the cell where the detainee is being held.

IO:

Ok, Private, did the Afraid of the Dark treatment work?

Pfc:

No, sir. He’s just been standing there in the dark not saying anything.

IO:

Damnit to hell! See Doc, see what we’re dealing with?

DD:

I do indeed. Have you tried making him stand up for hours at a time?

Pfc:

Well, yes, sir. We had him stand for four hours at a time before, but that didn’t make him talk, either.

DD:

Well, four hours isn’t much. Many people who aren’t vicious terrorists stand up for eight to ten hours in the normal course of their lives. Like Donald Rumsfeld, for example.

Pfc:

He’s not shackled to the ceiling, though. Yet.

IO:

Cut the attitude, private. Let’s get down to business. Private, meet the rest of the Biscuit team. We have Dr. Justin Volpe…

Volpe:

Ehhhhhhhhhhhhy, ‘ow we doin’ ‘ere, boy?

Pfc:

Fine, thank you, sir. Um, are you the Justin Volpe, the NYPD cop who got sent to prison for sodomizing your prisoner with a broomstick?

Volpe:

Dat’s me! I took courses inna joint, an’ I got my degree in Interrogation Psychology. Itsa brand-new branch uh duh science. Itsa beeyooteeful ‘ting! It’s weird, but I found my true callin’ in jail. I wadn’t cut out ta be a cop, anyways. Dat wuz da whole trouble.

IO:

And here is the other member of the team, Dr. Lynndie England.

England:

Hi.

Pfc:

Hello. You’re a doctor?

England:

Like, I am now. They put me on trial, but then I started crying, and my lawyer pointed out that, like, lots of government officials get promoted for screwing up, so they made me a doctor. Plus, I have lots of experience humiliating people.

Pfc:

Everyone in America, for instance.

DD:

Ok, team, are we ready to do no harm, like the Hippocratic Oath says?

Volpe:

Oh, baby!

DD:

Now, it seems nothing works with this detainee. Not the Sissy Slap Glove treatment, not the Afraid of the Dark treatment, not the Dance Instruction Technique, not even pissing on the Koran. So, what I would like to try next is the Missing his Mommy treatment. It would be easier if we could just torture him, but the United States doesn’t torture people.

Pfc:

It’s torturing me.

England:

How do you know he misses his mommy? I want to know, because, like, I’m a brand new mother myself, and I would want my kid to miss me.

Pfc:

You would have to be nice to him for a while first.

England:

Oh, boy. That could be like, a problem.

DD:

We know he misses his mother because she told me he always gets depressed and violent when he’s away from her. It’s called “separation anxiety”, and it’s often accompanied by abandonment issues. There are those who speculate that the entire terrorism problem boils down to those two things.

Pfc:

Well, sir, and also, last week he curled up in a ball on the floor naked, sucked his thumb, and said “I miss my mommy” over and over.

DD:

Hmmm. That could be a clue, but not necessarily. People are complex. He could have been trying to give false information.

IO:

Right, doc. They’re trained for that. One of ‘em had us on a wild goose chase for days when he told us he had to use the toilet.

Volpe:

“I miss my mommy.” Jeez, what a fuckin’ dothead mook.

DD:

I believe these people are “towelheads”, doctor. You see, a “dothead” would refer to a woman of Hindu faith, where the dots, known as a “bindi”, symbolize female energy…

Volpe:

No shit, doc? I t’aught it was so you knew where to shoot ‘em. Badabing!

DD:

Ahem. Well, nevertheless, my academic instinct is telling me that we must exploit his abandonment issues regarding his mother via this infantile sucking activity the private mentioned.

Volpe:

Ehhy, I know! When I wuz in jail, we useta play dis game wit boyz dat din’t wanna cooperate. We called it “suck on my joint or I’ll beat your fuckin’ head in”.

DD:

Brilliant. I should go to jail. Apparently, you don’t learn everything at Harvard.

England:

I’ll do it! I haven’t sucked on a joint since I got pregnant in Iraq. I can’t figure out how that happened…

DD:

Well, Lynndie, it works like this…

Pfc:

I’m dying…

IO:

Quiet private. Remember the medal I promised you. Let the masters work this through. You’re getting all of this in the log, aren’t you? And remind me to send Rummy a memo about these non-torture methods. They should go in the new How Not To Torture People manual. We have to give something to the press to get those liberal pansies off our backs.

DD:

The question is, my oh so esteemed colleagues, how do we tie the Sucking on the Joint technique, to the Missing his Mommy treatment?

England:

Maybe we should save the Missing his Mommy thing until after he has his lunch. That way he’ll be, like, really vulnerable because usually mothers feed their kids and everything…that’s like, the way I do it…

Pfc:

That’s a start, doctor. Well, the problem with that is, he’s on hunger strike. We’ve been shackling him to a chair and feeding him with a tube. I’m not sure you can really call that lunch.

IO:

But he gets to choose the color of the tube, and the tube is halal, so you know, it’s not like we’re being insensitive.

DD:

Oh, excellent. Did he show any appreciation for that?

Pfc:

Not really, sir. Can’t see why not.

DD:

These people are very strange. Are they even human? We’re charting new territory. I’m getting so excited. We should set up a control group to make sure we get this right, and then I can publish.

England:

I’ve got it! I’ll, like, dress up in a burqua and go in the cell with him and pretend to be his mother, okay? And I’ll be all nice to him and everything, and then, like, just when he’s starting to think I’m really his mother, I’ll strip naked in front of him, and one of you can run in and start fucking me up the ass! But wear a condom ’cause, like, I don’t wanna get pregnant again. Then, somebody can point at his dick when he gets hard, and somebody else can take pictures, and we can send them to his real mother!

Volpe:

Eehy, I’ll fuck you up da ass wit my broomstick! Dey give it back to me wit my diploma.

IO:

People, I think we can safely say that this long war just got a little bit shorter.

England:

Hey, does anyone want a signed copy of my book: “Every Picture Tells a Story: One Woman’s Life in the Army”?

Pfc:

I’m going insane.

DD:

Maybe we’ll try that tomorrow, private. But, thank you for the suggestion.

(Thudding noises in the background.)

IO:

What the hell is that?

(a soldier rushes into the room.)

Soldier:

Sir, they’re shelling the compound!

IO:

What?! Who?

Soldier:

The Cubans!

IO:

Finally! Return fire, soldier! People, I think we can say this war just got a little bit longer…hoo-rah!

NOTE: This is the last episode in this series about Gitmo. The author has become alarmed about the mild, vulgar streak this issue has aroused in him. He’s decided to turn his attention to less provocative issues, like abortion.

—Scot Crawford

_________________________________________________

click here for previous scene — "Off the Chain — Going Gitmo III"

Off the Chain — Going Gitmo — Intro

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

FRIDAY

An alarming development from the NY Times:

ALABAMA ADOPTS THE PEACH, NETTLING GROWERS NEXT DOOR

Alabama legislators have some fences to mend with neighboring Georgia after state representatives passed a resolution Tuesday naming peaches Alabama’s official tree fruit.

“Georgia is the Peach State,” said Robert L. Dickey III, of Musella, Ga., past president of the Georgia Peach Council and a fourth-generation peach grower. “We’re known internationally as the Peach State. We have always been the Peach State, and we think we have the best peaches in the world.”

Representative James M. Martin, a Chilton County Democrat and sponsor of the Alabama resolution, said he did not think Georgia should have a lock on peach pride.

“If you’ve ever tasted Alabama peaches, you’d throw rocks at Georgia,” Mr. Martin said.

—Don’t they understand how quickly this could descend into sectarian violence?

THURSDAY

From the NY Times re: the burgeoning Iraqi civil service:

NEITHER WAR NOR BOMBS STAY THESE IRAQ COURIERS

After the American invasion, postmen received motorbikes to make deliveries, a coveted perk. Now, every day but Friday, they load up with letters — packages must be picked up at the post office — and fan out through the city, steering through the streets and dodging potholes and explosions.

“I talk to him sometimes,” Mr. Hadi said of his motorbike.

—Imagine what happens when an Iraqi goes postal.

WEDNESDAY

From the LA Times about our great leaps toward tolerance:

ANTI-SEMITISM IS ALLEGED IN FRENCH TORTURE-KILLING

PARIS — In a new case of strife and brutality in France’s immigrant neighborhoods, authorities alleged Monday that anti-Semitism influenced a gang that kidnapped a Jewish store clerk, tortured him for more than three weeks and killed him.

The kidnappers, who called themselves “The Barbarians,” beat, burned and mutilated Halimi during 24 days of captivity in the cellar of a tough housing project in Bagneux, southwest of the capital, according to investigators.

The gang taunted Halimi’s family and a rabbi with anti-Semitic epithets and recited Koranic verses during telephone calls and e-mails demanding wildly diverging amounts of ransom that never were collected, investigators said.

— Man, I wish I were a cartoonist right now.

TUESDAY

From the LA Times about a new shift in the Iraq war:

REBELS’ ARSENAL INCLUDES POLITICS

BAGHDAD — Once viewed as a series of scattered cells with unfocused goals, Iraqi insurgents have begun to develop a coordinated political agenda, reaching out to Sunni Arab politicians and distancing themselves from foreign fighters whose attacks against civilians have alienated possible allies in a new government.

The size and scale of attacks against civilians also have declined precipitously. This year there were virtually no attacks on Shiite Muslims celebrating the holiday of Ashura, compared with last year and 2004, when suicide bombers killed dozens of pilgrims.

Such attacks could have undermined efforts to persuade the Shiite government to make concessions to Sunnis.

— It’s just this kind of editorializing that makes me distrust the liberal media.

According to the report, the insurgents have decided that it’s futile to try to hold territory and recommend that fighters slip into the local population, and then leave before U.S. troops can strike.

We can call it a strategy of recoil, redeploy and spoil,” said Peter Harling, an ICG analyst…

— Otherwise known as shit your caftan, run like hell, and fuck someone over.

MONDAY

From the Scotsman about those damn kids:

CHILDREN ‘WRONGLY GIVEN’ RITALIN

THOUSANDS of Scottish children, some as young as six, are wrongly being labelled hyperactive and given controversial drugs to stop anxious parents thinking they are to blame for unruly behaviour, a leading academic has warned.

On the use of Ritalin, the academic added: “This kind of medication for children as young as six is crazy. Their brains are still developing and yet they are being given mind-altering drugs.”

— Yeah, but this prepares them for a lifetime of savage, uncontrollable alcoholism.

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

MONDAY

From the Scotsman about how to sell a country:

TOURISM CHIEFS MARKET SCOTS HUNKS

FORGET the glorious glens, the majestic mountains and Loch Ness. The best way to attract tourists to Scotland is with our handsome men, according to the country’s official tourism agency.

“Women the world over love Scottish men – the kilts, the accents, the Scots sense of humour,” she said. “We are setting out to exploit that very fact and to show that Scotland’s beautiful landscapes are not the only attraction on offer.

“Women have this sort of mythic, iconic thing about Scotsmen,” she said. “It’s the Braveheart thing. They think Scotsmen are a bit wild and very manly. None of this new man stuff.”

Janey Godley, the Glasgow comedian, was less sure about the allure of the Scottish male, particularly her own generation, whom she described as “hobbits with hairy feet and bad teeth”.

—Weel, hava coupla drinks anna we’ll look bitter to ye, me dirhlin’ gihrl.

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

FRIDAY

An update from the NY Times on the rousing success that is Gitmo:

TOUGH US STEPS IN HUNGER STRIKE AT CAMP IN CUBA

United States military authorities have taken tougher measures to force-feed detainees engaged in hunger strikes at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, after concluding that some were determined to commit suicide to protest their indefinite confinement, military officials have said.

In recent weeks, the officials said, guards have begun strapping recalcitrant detainees into “restraint chairs,” sometimes for hours a day, to feed them through tubes and prevent them from deliberately vomiting afterward. Detainees who refuse to eat have also been placed in isolation for extended periods in what the officials said was an effort to keep them from being encouraged by other hunger strikers.

The measures appear to have had dramatic effects. The chief military spokesman at Guantánamo, Lt. Col. Jeremy M. Martin, said yesterday that the number of detainees on hunger strike had dropped to 4 from 84 at the end of December.

—Okay, as long as the feeding tubes are halal.

THURSDAY

A shocker from the NY Times about our moral makeup:

Common wisdom holds that people have a set standard of morality that never wavers.

—Who are these “commoners” and what is this “wisdom”? What do they, burn witches?

Yet studies of people who do unpalatable things, whether by choice, or for reasons of duty or economic necessity, find that people’s moral codes are more flexible than generally understood. To buffer themselves from their own consciences, people often adjust their moral judgments in a process some psychologists call moral disengagement, or moral distancing.

—Or trying to live with a fucking thing you did.

The professor threw out the test scores [of a test on which many students cheated] and got permission from the students to ask about their behavior. The cheaters’ scores on a standard test of moral judgment did not correlate at all with their level of plagiarism or collaboration. On the contrary, it was the most dishonest male students who scored highest on the morals test.

Clearly, this is not what you want to find in a test of moral judgment,” said Dr. Ravenscroft…

— So, no more testing. We’ll just have to leave some children behind.

WEDNESDAY

From an article in today’s NYT, called,
Chocolate That Flashes Its Passport:

His name was Conrad Miller, and he would be our chocolate sommelier for the afternoon.

— Hello, Conrad!

“It’s like reading a novel and eating a novel all at the same time,” he said.

— Tastes like Heart of Darkness to me.

“It [chocolate tasting] sits right on the fence between hedonism and intellectual pursuit,” said the chef Mario Batali.

— Ow.

The use of child slave labor in cocoa production is of particular concern.

— Particularly to the enslaved children, I should imagine.

For someone who just wants a good piece of eating chocolate, trying to sort out the politics from the percentages is akin to trying to drink from a fire hose.

— Mmmm, yes: This wafer I’m eating now tastes like a fire hose, but a fire hose wrapped around a child slave who straddles a fence while reading a dark, disturbing novel about the end of empire.

TUESDAY

From the Washington Post about a court splitting hairs over the separation of church and state:

PUBLIC AGENCY FAULTED IN EMINENT DOMAIN CASE

Philadelphia House Was Seized to Aid Religious Group, Which Built Private School

A city agency violated the separation of church and state when it seized a woman’s home to help a religious group, The Hope Partnership for Education, build a private school in a blighted Philadelphia neighborhood, a state appeals court ruled Monday.

The Hope Partnership is a venture of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus and the Sisters of Mercy, two Roman Catholic religious orders.

In a dissent to the ruling Monday, Judge Dante R. Pellegrini said there was no evidence that the Hope Partnership school project was designed to establish a religion, but rather was meant to serve residents of a poor neighborhood.

—The “Society of the Holy Child Jesus” and the “Sisters of Mercy” religious organizations? Preposterous.

MONDAY

From some masters of understatement over at the LA Times:

ENRON JURORS SEE GREED AS FACTOR

After a rapid, one-day selection process Monday, a jury was seated that includes at least three people who work in the oil and oil-services industries, a third-grade teacher, a woman who has been laid off from jobs four or five times, and a woman who works in Houston criminal courts and knows several of the lawyers involved in the trial.

One theme that emerged from the questioning is that the nation’s fourth-largest city is still something of a small town.

One juror’s ex-boyfriend is a friend of Lay’s sister, Sharon. Another’s parents are members of Lay’s country club, although that juror said of Lay: “I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup.”

— Huh. I thought country clubs were more about golf, and buffet dinners, and feeling superior, not so much about lineups. Times have changed for us all since 9/11.

Because we do not wish to offend Muslims, or at least the sort who have threatened cartoonists with decapitation, we have screened off all offensive depictions of the prophet Mohamet behind a digital veil. If you can tell the difference between a symbol and a god — which not many of us can — feel free to click here, to see a portfolio of forbidden funnies, bearing in mind that the Prophet shown here bears no ressemblance to any real prophets, living or dead, no matter what the captions say.

The following artists have risked their lives and jobs, in that order, so that you might be amused:

1. Dave Brown — The Independent, London
2. Woldhek— NC Handelsblad, Rotterdam
3. Herrmann — La Tribune, Gen»ve
4. Ruben — NRC Handelsblad, Rotterdam
5. Stephff — uwait Times, Kuwait
6. Martyn Tuner — Irish Times, Dublin
7. Tom Trouw — Irish Times, Amsterdam
8. Jens Julius — Jyllands-Posten, Denmark
9. Chappatte — Le Temps, Gen»ve

Initially published in the Danish paper, Jyllands Posten, the cartoons on the linked page can also be seen — or not — on the web at Courier International, dated Feb 3. The major American newspapers decided not to run any of the images. The NY Times reports:

In a midafternoon meeting on Friday, editors at The Chicago Tribune discussed the issue but decided against publishing the cartoons. “We can communicate to our readers what this is about without running it,” said James O’Shea, the paper’s managing editor.

Which we can dig, because it’s exactly how we feel about the Sistine Chapel, (a ceiling full of pictures of muscular people,) and the Statue of Liberty. (It’s green, wears a robe, and carries a torch.)

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

President Bush, in his State of the Union speech last Tuesday, described America as “addicted to Middle Eastern oil,” and proposed to radically cut back our dosage. Shrugging off both Democrats who objected that his proposed remedies are ineffectual, and Saudi Arabian princes concerned that they might inexplicably work, the president declared today that he was “going it alone.” He will end his own personal addiction to Middle Eastern oil, he said, even if he can’t do much for the rest of us.

“I know from ending my addictions to cocaine, alcohol, and unprotected frat-boy sex with coke whores, you gotta change the things you can, and accept the powerful interest groups you can’t. And that’s what I’m gonna do here,” he announced at today’s follow-up press conference.

From now on, the President said, he’s going to travel by what he called “the hired power,” rickshaws, pulled by devoutly Catholic undocumented Mexicans. “This is an energy source we have in infinite abundance,” the President explained. “These decent, Christian people, plus nukular energy plants located in difficult-to-guard locations near all our heavily Democratic cities will enable us to ‘expect miracles’ before the end of the century.”

Until then, he said, “we’ll just have to drill the bejesus out of the Alaskan wilderness.” When it comes to breaking any of the U.S.’s fossil fuel habits, Bush concluded, America’s only hope is to “Let go, and let God.”

. . .and, in a related story—

OIL-STUFFED PUPPIES & KITTENS FOUND IN SMUGGLER’S DEN

From Columbia to Afghanistan, traffickers in contraband wasted no time. Only two days after U.S. President Bush declared his country “addicted to Middle Eastern oil,” cartels were formed to manage what bandits the world over are assuming will become a “controlled substance.” Border guards report finding a steep rise in “small, adorable pets” pumped full of Iranian petroleum and smuggled in past sentimental airport personnel in anticipation of sharp oil price increases.

“Yesterday, it was heroin and cocaine you’d find in the puppies,” explained local police chief Rodriquez Bass, “Now it’s this new thing.”

“Whenever North Americans get addicted to something,” explained the Spanish language weekly Perro Rapido, “You know there’s going to be a war declared on it. When that happens, the street price goes up, so the kittens and puppies of this world are in for a hard time.”

ATF chief Carl J. Truscott, who has been put in charge of controlling illegal Middle Eastern fuel imports, forsees a difficult time for border patrol: “It’s easy to spot the oil-engorged kittens and puppies,” he told the Whatever, “because they don’t look right when they’re full of fuel. The challenge is to tell which cars are full of Iranian gas for re-sale, and which are full just because the driver doesn’t want to have to stop until she reaches Luis San Obispo.” He added that the Justice Department is working on new interrogation techniques designed to extract this critical information.