Broken News: Millions of Americans not gonna touch this one with a ten foot fucking pole

AMERICA—With the recent revelation that an attempted humanitarian aid mission to the Gaza strip was met with force by the Israeli military, resulting in anywhere from 10-20 deaths, 30 injured, and over 600 arrested, millions of Americans have announced that uh-uh, no way, not in a million fucking years are they gonna go anywhere near this one. Not with a ten-foot fucking pole.

“Oh no, you’re not dragging me into this,” announced David Haren, a fellow at the Brookings Institute Saban Center for Middle East Policy. “If there one thing Middle East studies have taught me, it’s to know better than to wade into this mess. Jog on.”

Indeed, when numerous experts were asked whether or not they’d like to talk about these events, we were met with abrupt hang-ups, abject laughter, stammering leading into fainting, and various reams of profanity indicating that we had either lodged our heads completely up our fucking asses, had gone completely off our fucking rockers, or were assuming a mass level of retardation had swept the ranks of American academic, foreign policy, and news commentary.

Upon requesting that a group of individuals from the Washington Post give their opinions on the situation, they, as a group, slowly backed away from us before sprinting and diving into an abandoned spillway.

When we approached normally reliable sources on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for their input, such as John Abrahms of the Carter Center, who last year almost successfully convinced the Oxford English Dictionary to add “arguing about Israel on the internet” as the number one definition of “futility,” Mr. Abrahms produced a large knife and proceeded to barricade himself inside his office.

Even members of the American public seemingly know better than to comment, as if they feel nothing useful or productive will ever emerge from a discussion of Israel.

Several attempts to engage citizens on the street about things like American aid to Israel, the UN Security Council, Turkey and NATO tensions with Israel, independent investigations, Matisyahu's back catalogue, or general questions about the Middle East were either met with intense skepticism and silence, protestations that they spoke no English, or statements that they "fucking knew better and that you [we] oughtta fucking know better than to ask, you [we] jackass [jackasses]."

In fact most Americans have reflexively taken to flinching when the third-person singular verb, “is”, is employed. Most have suspended the use of the word “real” in order to avoid having other people think they just heard them make a comment about Israel and attempt to start a conversation about it.

We were able to get one person to comment, Dr. Tom Wallace of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown. After a series of unethical lies about our intention to discuss flowers, puppies, and the general state of pleasant niceties, Dr. Wallace eagerly opened up.

After explaining that we were “rotten, disingenuous bastards” and that he would “bring down all manner of unpleasant horrors on our families", we in turn informed him that the room we were in had been barricaded, the windows sealed, sharp objects removed, and that he had no chance of escape. After an unsuccessful attempt to change the subject to “things that are much less divisive… like, say the Armenian genocide or America’s storied racial conflicts”, Dr. Wallace relented.

“I, uh, would just like to say that… oh Jesus… that, whether or not you think Israel acted rashly or, OR... that the actions of the humanitarians… SO CALLED HUMANITARIANS, SO CALLED HUMANITARIANS… were justified,” Wallace said, his eyes darting around the room looking for any means of escape and his shirt beginning to soak from the profuse sweat.

“I think we can all agree… that this… was… important. Or possibly not important at all. I certainly condemn the loss of life, but not in a manner which seeks in any way to asses blame, just factually acknowledge that lives were lost… hoo boy…. Sovereignty… good… terrorism… bad,” he finished, before attempting to swallow his own tongue after repeated attempts to hold his breath until he died failed miserably.

As of now, Wallace is recovering in the intensive care wing of an unnamed local hospital. His career is in critical condition, having been immolated in a cross fire of warring commentary on his commentary by opposite sides of the Israel/Palestine debate.

At press time, the country said “See!” and noted that there’s no way they’re getting involved of any of this shit. Early reports say America has calmly turned its TV to old re-runs of Mama’s Family.

Give chickpeas a chance

Jews and Arabs. They go together like Jews and Arabs. You know the story: one launches rockets at the other, one invades the other, one is accused of violating international law and the Geneva conventions by the other. Oh the hijinks they get into. But if there is one common theme to this seemingly endless series of conflicts,k it is war. War... over hummus. That's what this conflict is all about, right?

Lebanon set a record for the largest plate of hummus Saturday in the continuing gastronomic war with Israel over the regional delicacy.

The war has played out publicly for years with two sides outdoing each other for the title of world's best or world's largest hummus dish.

On Saturday, about 300 Lebanese chefs in the village of al-Fanar -- about 8 km (5 miles) east of Beirut -- lay claim to the latter title with a dish that weighed 11.5 tons. That's 23,042 pounds or 10,452 kg.

The achievement more than doubled the previous record -- set in January in the Arab-Israeli village of Abu Gosh.

Israel has responded by sending tanks over the border and building a series of walls around Lebanese chickpea farms. Hamas has responded by slingshotting bowls of tahini randomly into Jerusalem.

This is just the latest battle in the war over hummus, with each side trading Guinness World Record attempts as the public front over a various serious battle over who can claim the rights to having originated hummus. Lebanon wishes to have the European Commission grant them a "protected designation of origin" order on hummus, so that only Lebanon will be able to label mashed chickpea dishes "hummus". Much like the Greeks with feta cheese, where every other country that produces it must refer to it as "Greek style cheese". Israel claims that this is tantamount to a country trying to claim the invention of bread or wine. In any event the special designation could mean millions or billions in export rights and I'm sure this fight won't escalate into increased hostilities and America vetoing things in the Security Council.

But despite this battle and the charged record attempts it engenders, some are hopeful.

"If you enter any good hummus restaurant in this region, you will see Jews and Muslims, Palestinians and Israelis sitting at the same table, eating the same food. I think in the end this rivalry will show that we in the Middle East have far more in common than the things that divide us."

Well, when food opinions supercede religion, territory, and who scuffed whose sandal first two thousand years ago, the rest of the world will breathe a sigh of relief. Until then, we're just hoping that a turf battle between Famous Original Ahmed's Hummus and Original Famous Ahmed's Hummus over stolen recipes doesn't touch off an international incident. All I can say is thank God Iran isn't trying to build the World's Biggest Falafel. That could really set something off.

Understatement of the day

Maybe you've noticed the tensions in the Middle East lately. Or should I say: the slightly more tense than usual tensions in the Middle East. It started off with news of more Israeli settlements being announced with the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the groin during VP Biden's diplomatic trip to Jerusalem and has since escalated into a childish one-upping of snubs, terse statements, flow charts about Israeli building codes, photo ops, photo op snubs, and the general level of childishness one would expect from the Middle East peace process.

It has, of course, thrown the Israel/Palestine negotiations into chaos. Which isn't a surprise, seeing as how everything does that. The breakfast you had this morning? That really fucked up the peace process. But in explaining how recent diplomatic tensions between Israel and the US have risen stemming from the Biden/settlement incident, one of the biggest understatements in the history of the peace process might have been dropped in an attempt to sweep this whole kerfuffle under the rug.

The Jerusalem municipality has approved 20 new apartments for Jews in an Arab neighborhood of east Jerusalem, the city said Wednesday, in a move that could stir a new diplomatic crisis with the United States just as Israel's leader is in Washington on a fence-mending visit.
...
The Obama administration is seeking "clarification" of the latest building plan and continues to believe Israeli construction in Jerusalem is destructive to the Mideast peace process, said White House spokesman Tommy Vietor.
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Jerusalem city officials have tried to play down the project as a zoning issue.

Yes, a zoning issue. One of the biggest problems in the Middle East peace process, settlements, has been distilled down into "zoning issues". Well that is correct, much like World War II started with zoning issues in the Sudetenland. This is slightly different that what's going on in Haiti, which is reeling in the aftermath of some building code issues.

The unnamed Jerusalem city officials are right, it's just a problem stemming from the fact that Israeli zoning and building codes are based in the Book of Genesis. You trying getting those laws changed.

So a round of applause for the Jerusalem city officials. Your gift for understatement is not lost on us. Well played.

I think I'll enjoy the architectural beauty of Dubai from afar, thank you very much

I'm not sure I quite understand the aims and goals of Dubai and the United Arab Emirates. It seems to me that they have two quite contradictory goals. One, create some of the most ridiculous buildings, structures, and resorts known to man in an attempt to lure business and high end tourism dollars. Two, subject anyone who goes there to the most arcane, regressive, and unfair judicial system anyone could possibly conceive of. I'm no rich Arab oil sheik or developer, but those two goals don't seem to mesh together.

Let me explain.

A United Arab Emirates sheikh was acquitted Sunday of charges connected to the videotaped beating and torture of an Afghan grain dealer.

Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, a member of the emirates' ruling family, was charged with rape, endangering life and causing bodily harm in connection with the nearly three-hour long tape shot in 2004 in the desert outside Abu Dhabi, one of the United Arab Emirates in the Persian Gulf region.

See, they're just like us! Sure, one might say that he's probably guilty just because there's a three hour tape of the man pouring sand in a victim's mouth before beating him with a nailed board, burning his genitals with a cigarette lighter, shocking him with a cattle prod, leading him to believe he would be shot, pouring salt into his wounds, and repeatedly driving an SUV over him. But others would say, that you should shut up. I mean not only was he taking prescription medication that caused all of this, probably Rapinex or Abusitol, but they say that tape doesn't show everything the tape explicitly shows in graphic detail. Who can really argue with that?

Then there's stuff like this.

A father-of-three who was found with a microscopic speck of cannabis stuck to the bottom of one of his shoes has been sentenced to four years in a Dubai prison.
...
A search by customs officials uncovered a speck of cannabis weighing just 0.003g - so small it would be invisible to the naked eye and weighing less than a grain of sugar - on the tread of one of his shoes.

Frankly the man should have known better: there was that case where a man was imprisoned for having three poppy seeds. Then there's that whole thing where you're at fault if you get raped there. It works that way for both women and men. Equality!

So there are positives and negatives. Sure, you get to partake in five star hotels and the lavish life of the ultra rich... on the other hand you'll probably be raped and tortured in the desert, get thrown in jail for letting it happen to you, and then get an extra four years tacked on to your sentence of "1st degree getting raped and tortured" because they found out you had lemon poppyseed cake at breakfast. But, on the other hand, those buildings are really crazy and they have a massive hotel shaped like a giant wind sail! Agassi played Federer on its helipad! So I guess you'll have to make that decision for yourself. I think I'll just Google architectural reviews of their follies and "Dubai financial collapse" from afar.

Oh, I forgot to mention the slave labor and... we'll just call it "all the other stuff". Don't ever go there.

Broken News: Ludicrous building industry near collapse as Dubai economic crisis worsens

DUBAI—The recent opening of the 2,717 ft, 160 floor Burj Khalifa skyscraper was greeted with joy by many. However, the centerpiece of what Dubai officials are hoping will become the London or New York of the Middle East has been met with trepidation by several groups. Indeed, the number of vacancies in the $1.5 billion skyscraper, combined with the debt incurred to build such monstrous buildings, and the resulting collapse of Dubai’s finances, have signaled the death of one of the world’s formerly booming industries: immensely stupid construction.

In fact, with the Burj Khalifa completed there are no new plans for any new intensely idiotic building concepts or even marginally feeble-minded and functionally useless projects. Recent months have seen a dramatic scaling back or even outright cancellation of some of the dumbest and most ill-conceived architectural projects known to man.

All this has many wondering what lies ahead for the stupid building construction industry that fueled Dubai’s growth at the outset of the 21st century.

“Yeah, times are tough,” a mournful Henri Duplass, CEO of Duplass Merde, one of the largest builders of foolish structures in the world, noted. “I remember when we built that giant 22,500 square meter indoor ski slope and followed it up by building the world’s largest outdoor pool and fake beachfront 100 yards from an ocean beachfront. Those were heady times."

“Before everything went to shit, we were designing a fake Swiss lakeside mountain retreat. We were carting in a trillion tons of granite for our mountain, had drawn up plans to dig out an artificial lake the size of Lake Champlain, and were still tinkering with the massive air conditioning/sprinkler system that would have been required to keep natural Swiss flora and fauna alive in the middle of a 120 degree desert. It was going to cost $7 billion dollars and be of no use to anyone. It would have been so... so beautiful...”

“Now? We’ve been reduced to crafting practical structures that are of use to normal people. I designed some low-income housing the other day and almost vomited in my mouth.”

Indeed, the industry has taken a massive hit. In recent years, Dubai had boasted 25% of all the world’s cranes in operation, but has recently seen that statistic shrink to an alarmingly sensible level for a Middle Eastern country with little in the way of industry, culture, or population.

In addition to the Dubai Swiss Chalet project, the recent economic troubles have cause the cancellation or delay of numerous ridiculous projects including the Dubai City Tower, a 1.5 mile high 400 floor building that was to have a vertical bullet train instead of an elevator, a Hanna Barbara-themed amusement park on a hover platform, an artificial island shaped like a construction team building an artificial island, a five thousand seat stadium dedicated to women’s sports, a Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, a branch of the science department of the University of Alabama, a monument to human folly, a Catholic church, and a series of metaphorical buildings that were to be built on foundations of sand.

According to analysts most of the problems in Dubai result from a drastic overestimation of the desire of people to live there, resulting in numerous home and business vacancies combined with the sheer amount of debt the United Arab Emirates amassed to build these asinine structures. With estimates of $100 billion in debt for the state owned businesses that amassed them and little hope of recouping losses and filling vacancies in this economic climate, the outlook is bleak.

“Some would say that we’re up shit creek without a paddle,” observed Ali Mohammed Sahan, a spokesman for Dubai World, the government owned investment company that funded most of the retarded structures. “But I disagree. We have a paddle, it’s just that it’s over 600 meters tall, made of platinum and diamonds, and affixed to the ground through a complex jumble of steel trusses. It’s going to take an incredible sum and a greater influx of foreign capital for us to detach and use said paddle.”

But despite these setbacks and the massive contraction that the stupid building industry is about to go through, those close to the situation remain optimistic for the future.

“Somewhere in a backyard someplace, there’s some kid in a sandbox building some dumb fucking thing out of whatever he can get his hands on,” observed a prideful Duplass. “And somewhere there’s some rich idiot who wants to deficit spend his country into poverty and utilize the modern equivalent of slave labor to get it built. That’s the kind of thing that gives me hope for the future.”

“We’ll be back before you know it. Building, I don’t know, a bunch of skyscrapers that fit together like Tetris blocks or something,” Duplass smiled. “We’ll be back.

Picture of the day

Part of a Time Magazine photo essay on the largest middle finger in human history and the biggest possible "fuck you" that one country could possibly give during a global recession, the newly rechristened Burj Khalifa, named after light hitting mid-eighties Pirates shortstop Sammy Khalifa.

If you're up for reading some more about the Burj, try the La Times article called A Temple to Hubris or this BBC article detailing the inhumane conditions it took to build the Burj and most of Dubai. It just shows what you can do when you dare to dream... and dare to spend way beyond your means... and dare to employ slave labor.

You don't say

I don't want to alarm you too much while you're still groggy from turkey consumption and the elbow you may have taken to the head on Black Friday while you trying to cut in front of some elderly pensioner to get a discounted blu-ray player, but there is shocking news of a revelatory nature to discuss. Yes, it seems that shortsighted planning, bad decisions, and political/military failures have taken a problem in the Middle East and turned it into an even bigger problem that dramatically affected the US and our foreign/military policy years after it took place. This is the first time that has ever happened.

The report asserts that the failure to kill or capture bin Laden at his most vulnerable in December 2001 has had lasting consequences beyond the fate of one man. Bin Laden's escape laid the foundation for today's reinvigorated Afghan insurgency and inflamed the internal strife now endangering Pakistan, it says.
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"Removing the al-Qaida leader from the battlefield eight years ago would not have eliminated the worldwide extremist threat," the report says. "But the decisions that opened the door for his escape to Pakistan allowed bin Laden to emerge as a potent symbolic figure who continues to attract a steady flow of money and inspire fanatics worldwide. The failure to finish the job represents a lost opportunity that forever altered the course of the conflict in Afghanistan and the future of international terrorism."

The report states categorically that bin Laden was hiding in Tora Bora when the U.S. had the means to mount a rapid assault with several thousand troops at least. It says that a review of existing literature, unclassified government records and interviews with central participants "removes any lingering doubts and makes it clear that Osama bin Laden was within our grasp at Tora Bora."

Well, it's not like we didn't already know that, but it's nice to have a definitive account of how the Bush Administration completely shit the bed on capturing bin Laden by not devoting enough troops to the cause of finding him and then pulling what ones they did have to go to the new war they were starting in Iraq. And what wonders that war did for us all. As a bonus, the report was delivered by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and it's chairman John Kerry, who futilely tried to make that exact point all throughout the 2004 Presidential election he fucked up. He must feel very proud that this gets added to the list of things he was right about five years ago. Ask Al Gore, I'm sure that's almost as good as being President.

So let's see, I think that means that America pretty much fucked up every single thing possible in the aftermath of 9/11. Not only did we gut our laws at home and violate our Constitution, we violated them abroad with our rendition, detention, and torture policies, we started a war in a wrong country, half-assed the war in the correct country to a degree that not only didn't we defeat the Taliban, but we allowed them to regroup, come back stronger, and helped them play a part in trying to destabilize Pakistan. Oh yeah, and we let the guy who masterminded the attacks waltz away, have shown little interest in capturing him, and there's still nothing built where the Twin Towers stood. By "we", I mean "the Bush Administration", but then again, we couldn't even be bothered to pay attention until 2008. Meanwhile, our one attempt to prosecute some of the guys involved in the attacks can't be done without half our country wetting itself over the horrors that will befall us if we follow the laws of our country.

But hey, at least Zacarias Moussaoui is in jail. We didn't fuck that one up. Mark that in the 'Job Well Done' column with.............. uh........................ um........................... yeah.

Video of the day

One of the workers of the Burj Dubai in....Dubai, decided to give you a glimpse of the world's tallest structure in the best way he knew how: by climbing to the top of the spire and dangling a camera over the edge.



"The tower wobbles, dreadfully, so if my hand is shaking, it's not just me." Well, then next time bring up a HD camera with some stability control, asshole. I barely got vertigo or a crippling awareness of my fear of heights from watching that.

The Burj is slated to be finished early next year. Unclear is when Glenn Beck and Joe the Plumber plan to fly a 747 into it. I guessing in early September.

Picture of the day

From Popular Science comes this look at the Dubai Air Show.....FROM SPACE. The GeoEye-1 satellite to be more specific. The Dubai Air Show is the largest airshow in the Middle East, barely beating out a rural shack in Afghanistan where an opium farmer has two beat-up WWI-era Fokker's that he keeps on display. It is the fastest growing airshow and will soon become a centerpiece of Dubai's grand plan to be a home to the largest and gaudiest everything in the world.

As always click to embiggen.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 11.11

Influential Players: How Six Big Stakeholders Shaped Health Care
In a follow up to today's big health care shocker, TPM looks at how several of the large health care stakeholders were able to shape the debate and get what they wanted. You know, to "help" the American people. Mostly it's a bunch of groups that got minor concessions in return for their support. Only PhRMA was able to weasel billions out of the government in return for slapping a $20 on the nightstand and promising to call tomorrow. Damn government and its low self esteem.

Falling Far Short of Reform
David Leonhardt of the New York Times decided to waste a good sized chunk of his day looking at the House health care bill and then analyzing where it falls short and providing suggestions for ways it could be made better. Oh bless his precious, dear, naive heart. He actually thinks there's a chance for improving this bill and that the best way to improve it is with reasoned analysis and serious, thoughtful suggestions. I don't have it in my heart to break it to him that any suggestion that doesn't start with killing/incapacitating at least 60% of the Legislative branch neuters any change of getting something intelligent passed.

Why Employment Might Not Fully Recover Until 2013
Happiness vampire Mark "Mr. Sunshine" Thoma of CBS Moneywatch doesn't want you to let all the recent great job news go to your head. He says that in addition to unemployment being 10.2% that it isn't likely to recover until 2013, around the time President Palin is sworn into office. The son of a bitch even backs it up with charts. Is there any reason to have hope? Well, the earth might explode in 2012, so there's always that. Try and tough it out until then.

Blackwater Said to Pursue Bribes to Iraq After 17 Died
America's dainty sweethearts, Blackwater, is being accused of handing out $1 million in secret payments to Iraqi officials in order to buy their silence over that whole shooting civilians thing. I think we should give them all a round of applause, bribing is much less nefarious behavior than indiscriminate civilian murder, weapons smuggling, murder conspiracies on US soil, and mob style hit squads. I think they've learned their lesson. Let's give them five or six more no-bid contracts.

Vanished Persian army said found in desert
You think we know how to stage an epic Middle Eastern quagmire, then you haven't heard about Persian King Cambyses II, who lost 50,000 soldiers in 525 B.C. in what was called an "cataclysmic sandstorm". Well duh, you don't lose 50k if it gets a little dusty out. This is a vindication of a story by historian Herodotus that many had thought was a fanciful myth because no evidence had ever been found. Finally I can take off my "Believe in Herodotus" shirt and put on my "Herodotus: Vindicated" shirt. Glad I had both made up.

Elections, Afghanistan style

What's the best way to win an election? Rig it. But what if dirty foreigners have already found out you rigged it and are making you follow your own Constitutional laws by having a second round? Run un-opposed. Works for Hamid Karzai.

Afghan officials on Monday canceled plans for a runoff presidential vote, declaring President Hamid Karzai the winner after the withdrawal on Sunday of his last remaining challenger, Abdullah Abdullah.

The announcement capped a fraught election widely depicted as deeply flawed by corruption and voting irregularities.

Azizullah Ludin, the chairman of Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission, said the Constitution did not require a runoff and the second-round vote had been canceled after Mr. Abdullah’s announcement that he was dropping out of the race.

And so begins another term for the man charmingly called a "Weak Partner in Time of War". Why did Abdullah Abdullah drop out? Some combination of wanting to spare Afghans the election costs and insurgent attack risks inherent in a second round of elections, an offer from the CIA of big time money like Karzai's brother gets, the emergence of a pesky red laser dot that appeared on his chest last week and kept moving from his heart to between his eyes an back to his heart over and over again, and a desire not to fall victim to another election rigging on the "rig an election once, shame on you; rig an election twice, shame on me" principle.

Finally, now that Karzai has "won", we can get down to the business of sending our last remaining troops there to start Operation Our Bad, We Really Should Have Done This Stuff Eight Years Ago, Better Late Than Never, Right? But don't worry, Afghanistan's, shall we say, contentious history with occupying forces, combined with the fact that it took us nearly eight years of bombing runs and fighting to actually conceive of a strategy, widespread corruption in the Karzai government, their drug trade economy and drug lord power hierarchy, combined with the fact that we still know little to nothing about the politics and people of the area will all be figured out....by dicking around there for another six months or so. Well, at least we've got those pesky election questions out of the way. That'll probably fix most of it.

Design of the day

via Ecofriend comes this look at Graft Lab's Vertical Village, the next salvo in Dubai's attempt to transform itself into a Final Fantasy video game. The building is for, what else, hotel and entertainment facilities with some residential mixed in. Presumably for those that come to visit and work there short term and not for the dozen people who are actually from Dubai. People from Dubai live in London. The project will receive LEED Gold Star certification, which is expected considering it is a giant solar panel that people can party in.

Unconfirmed reports have it stealing all of the earth's sunlight via it's massive massive solar collectors. Be forewarned: we will have to go to Dubai to visit warmth and light now. On the bright side, they do have ample hotel space for us all.

Late nite Palestinian children's show video dump

I don't want to throw too much of a damper on any puppet/muppet related hopes of peace between Israelis and Palestinians, but we have been reminded of previous failed examples. There is the case of Mickey Farfour here, a Palestinian children's show mascot who was struck down by the Israelis.



Luckily Farfour's struggle against the Zionists was taken up by a giant bee.....who died because the Zionists denied him healthcare for whatever bee related illness he had. Luckily his cause was taken up by a giant rabbit, Assud, who....eats Jews or something.



Will the puppet/muppet/man in shoddy suit based violence never end? I can only hope that Karim and Haneen from Shara’a Simsim learn the lessons of Farfour, that bee thing, and the pink bunny. Because Israel doesn't fuck around with uppity Palestinian puppets, even if they are backed by the Children's Television Workshop.

h/t Jesse

Headline of the day

Can the Muppets Make Friends in Ramallah?

I'm going to guess......no? But if anyone can bridge the Israeli/Palestinian divide it's going to be a felt bird talking about sharing and friendship. I wish them good luck.

Fox News: Your source for geography

All these years and I thought we had went to war over in Iraq. Apparently we've been warring in Egypt this whole time and no one in the American media had the balls to step up and set the record straight until now. Who knew?

I'm just glad they bothered to use real country names. I half-expected the labels to say "Oil, brown people, brown people, evil brown people, really evil brown people, oil, bagel makers, pyramids, war place." This is a step in the right direction.

Diplomatic love connections

Libya's Qaddafi Gave Condi Rice $212,000 In Gifts

In its final months in office, the Bush administration made out pretty well in odd and exotic gifts from foreign leaders - including diamond jewelery, a taxidermied lion, and Israeli bike shorts.

One of the most generous gift-givers was Libya's Moamar Qaddafi, who seemed particularly grateful for former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit to Tripoli last year, giving her gifts with a total value of $212,225, including a diamond ring and a locket with his own picture inside, according to a newly-released State Department report.

Oh my, seems like international diplomacy is a little sexier than I originally thought. Diamond lockets with Qaddafi's picture inside, bike shorts, free dead lions, mountain bikes, saddles.....it's all so sordid. In return for the gift the US Government reportedly sent Qaddafi a chain with a diamond encrusted characture of the head of Condi, not unlike the kind Rick Ross (the boss) sports. In return for getting the bike short from Ehud Olmert, Bush strutted around the Oval Office in them, picking up briefing documents that has been "accidentally" dropped and generally just acting sexy for Ehud. Hey, that Roadmap to Peace doesn't come without the traveling of some hard miles.

In many cases the reason given for the acceptance of these gifts was "Non-acceptance would cause embarrassment to donor and U.S. Government", but in some cases the reason was "Can you believe how cool this shit is? There's no way I'm letting those eggheads at the Smithsonian get their grubby nerd mitts on this." I should have gotten into this diplomatic racket, I could use cooler stuff. But I thought you should know this just so you're not surprised when Condi and Muammar get married in Tripoli next summer. I wonder what gifts they'll get from foreign governments then.

Oh good, more chaos in the Middle East

Hey remember that part where millions and millions of Iranians went out and voted in what many world leaders, observers, and bloggers were calling a sign of hope for free and fair elections inside Iran and signaled hopes that what was essentially an Islamic theocracy was showing signs of becoming more modern and willing to join the world community? Yeah, that all went pear shaped, didn't it?

I can't believe rigging the vote in the most ham-handed way possible, shutting down methods of communication within Iran, blocking foreign news, putting rival leaders under house arrest, sending in police to beat up protesters, immediately signing off on election results, and ordering people not to protest didn't go off without a hitch. Unpopular coup attempts from an unelected religious theocracy against popular reform leaders usually go so well. Especially when they come at the end of an election that saw massive turnout in favor of that reform. I can't believe the Iranian people didn't buy it. I would have swore picking a random landslide number and saying Ahmadinejad won by that number would have worked. I guess that's a lesson to all you future dictatorships out there, when you nakedly rig an election, say your guy won by 51%, not 67%.

What now? Well suddenly crazy right wing claims of Iran/Israel military conflict don't sound so far fetched. Inside Iran there seems to be not only realization that this whole process was a farce, but real anger, and serious attempts to make sure this fraud isn't allowed to stand. Mir Hossein Mousavi, the man who really won the election, is still alive and seems to be able to organize his supporters into action. In a surprising reversal, Ayatollah Assaholla Khamenei has decided that maybe this whole election rigging for the massively unpopular leader the people are now in the streets rioting against chanting "death to the dictator" thing was a mistake and has ordered an inquiry into the election. Of course the same people who rigged it are probably going to be doing the inquiry, so let's not get too far ahead of ourselves just yet.

Isn't the Middle East great? Just when you thought there wasn't one more way that the place could become crazier and more unstable, Iran rigs an election. Good times. Oh, American TV media? You might want to , I don't know, cover this a little more intensely. It seems important.

AdSense

An ad drawn up for Disney/Buena Vista International by M&C Saatchi titled "Life should be a little more Disney". The first two? Rather mundane vignettes about cleaning up. The third one above...yeah...kind of flies off the rails there. I don't understand why these never went up anywhere.

Where's the hand holding?

C'mon Barry, you may have bowed to him last time you met him, you said something in Muslimese during a speech today about "tolerance" "Muslim alliances" and "new beginnings", your middle name is Hussein, you were educated in a madrassa right under the monkey bars where terrorists train, and there's an ongoing conspiracy to hide your birth certificate so the American people will never know you were born in Afghanistan and are not eligible to be President. Now you can't even be bothered to hold hands with the King?

It's hard work coming up with conspiracy theories, could you at least provide us with some extra material? You know, like Bush did:


Tonight I better see photos of you gettin' to second base with King Abdullah or Hosni Mubarak. Here's an ice breaker for Hosni: your name is Barack, his name is Mubarak. It's almost the same! You'll be makin' out in no time.

Picture of the day

How do you celebrate the new American President's visit to the Middle East and stop in Egypt? Well, with a giant solid gold plate with a pharaoh head and hieroglyphics proclaiming him the new King Tut. Duh.

You can have your collectors plates and coins, I'll take the giant solid gold wall hanging. Hopefully things end better for Barack "New Tutankhamen" Obama than they did for the original Tutankhamen, what with the organs in jars and burial inside a stone tomb full of his cats.