Rhinocrisy

Friends, we have in the past expressed concern that our readership might have an overdeveloped sense of morality, and so may be trampled and bruised by the herd in the mad dash towards the pinnacle of crapulence. For your protection, therefore, we present this occasional series on how you, kind reader, may become less kind and more cruel, and thus hopefully further your success.

There are few people as vulnerable and impressionable in this world as children, and as we suggested in previous editions of our Guide to Being Evil, one of the surest paths to unadulterated evil is by exploiting that weakness. As I like to say, there is no sound sweeter than the piteous shrieks of the innocent.

However, it is vital that, in committing your evil deeds, you don’t make too much work for yourself. Not because sloth is an exceptional evil by itself (it’s only a second-rate evil), but because mass productivity is what’s really required to achieve legendary status as a demonic fiend. We’d all like to be able to disembowel and consume the entrails of half a million small toddlers, but who has that kind of time?^* Instead, we can save ourselves considerable effort by piggy-backing on the general tide of evil washing over society.

As a case study, we present the website Miss Bimbo, a “virtual fashion game” created by one Nicolas Jacquart, an evil genius capable of inducing such a towering hatred that you, personally, would relish the act of skewering his body with a couple of meat-hooks. The site is directed at an extremely vulnerable segment of the population: young, pre-teen girls, and its goal may be neatly summed up by the tag: “Are you ready to become Queen of the Bimbos !?!” Herein, the young female may pilot a virtual bimbo, and by controlling her weight, appearance, and social status, may accrue “bimbo dollars” and “bimbo cred”, until she (hopefully) attains the desired rank of ruling monarch of a very sad kingdom.

Now, hold your skepticism. You may, at first, be disinclined to believe that such a website is not a parody, or that it actually has managed to attract half a million young, impressionable girls and inculcated in them a desire to become a vapid, clownish caricature of a human being. This is because you do not have the necessary propensity towards evil! Your failure to imagine such a thing is precisely what we are attempting to correct via this series. Take notes, and learn.

I created a test account to explore the Miss Bimbo virtual world (bimbo nickname: Jenghis Khan). At this beginning stage my goals are modest: secure an apartment, get a job, and “Change your drab hairstyle to become a blonde with cool pigtails!” However, if I were to persevere, I would be able to purchase lingerie, a makeover, a nice tan, and maybe (for the benefit of thousands of points of “Bimbo Attitude”) some plastic surgery: a face lift, or perhaps some breast augmentation surgery! Unfortunately the complaints of outraged parents and health care officials forced M. Jacquart to remove the ability to purchase diet pills for your bimbo, which means that he will no longer be able to directly instruct young girls in how to develop and maintain their eating disorders. However, we can be confident that the remainder of his website will admirably succeed in destroying any sense of self-worth that those girls may have.

Now, take note of what M. Jacquart is doing: his barbarism is hinged on a prototype that is well-familiar within the zeitgeist. Rather than doing the hard work of creating a destructive archetype all by himself and somehow encouraging young girls to adopt it, he has made use of the already-widespread social message that girls need to become as empty-headed and artificial as possible, aspiring only to the acquisition of clothes, money, looks, and social notoriety. Others have already laid the groundwork by creating and maintaining industries devoted to making girls hate their bodies and devalue their minds. Pleasant Nicolas merely provides a conduit for the flow of this filth, directing it more efficiently towards the intended targets. Thus he manages great evil with only slight effort.

We may all learn from his vile example.

^* Not to mention that toddler entrails go straight to the hips.

What I would want to do is to have my Justice Department and my Attorney General immediately review the information that’s already there and to find out are there inquiries that need to be pursued. I can’t prejudge that because we don’t have access to all the material right now. I think that you are right, if crimes have been committed, they should be investigated. You’re also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt because I think we’ve got too many problems we’ve got to solve.

So this is an area where I would want to exercise judgment - I would want to find out directly from my Attorney General - having pursued, having looked at what’s out there right now - are there possibilities of genuine crimes as opposed to really bad policies. And I think it’s important - one of the things we’ve got to figure out in our political culture generally is distinguishing betyween really dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity. You know, I often get questions about impeachment at town hall meetings and I’ve said that is not something I think would be fruitful to pursue because I think that impeachment is something that should be reserved for exceptional circumstances. Now, if I found out that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in coverups of those crimes with knowledge forefront, then I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law — and I think that’s roughly how I would look at it.

What a brave, brave man. His noble spirit embiggens us all.

More nobility from the media:

The mainstream media by and large seem to agree with Bush that the ABC News Report wasn’t so startling, and they have given Bush’s remarks almost no coverage. There was no mention of Bush’s admission in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal or the Los Angeles Times. There was nothing on the major wire services. And nothing on CNN, CBS or NBC.

Finally, this video from “Condimustgo.com” is worthwhile. Although I might add ‘to jail’ to the end of that URL.

Three of the most-viewed videos on YouTub today are of Hillary Clinton allegedly crying, or “tearing up”. I, for one, don’t buy it. If you haven’t seen it, here it is:

Clinton is giving a relatively boiler-plate speech about how much she “cares about our country”, and how she “passionately believes” in what she is doing. That, I DO buy: her passion is lust, and we all know what she’s lusting for. But what is she “tearing up” over? Who can tell?

This morning I woke up to some lady on NPR marveling at Hillary’s display of genuine emotion. She interviewed the lady who asked the question, and several others who testified that Hillary’s tears^* had convinced them to vote Clinton! at the very last minute. After vomiting on my pillow, I thought to myself “How the hell am I going to clean this up?” “My God, are we really so starved for political theater that we’re willing to swallow whatever horseshit act some politician can throw at us?” The lady who asked the question, incidentally, did NOT vote Clinton - she voted Obama, because the previous night, Obama’s stirring speech had “moved her to tears”.

I’m truly astonished that people can maintain this level of vacuousness. And not, apparently, a small handful of people - the majority of American adults. Shouldn’t there be an epidemic of head-implosion going on?

^* Which, frankly, are not in evidence in the video to mine eyes. Can you see ‘em?

So, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. But by whom?

To an American the answer is obvious: al-Qaeda did it. This is the assumption of Anthony Zinni, former CENTCOM:

Zinni rattled off reasons for al-Qaeda’s wanting Bhutto dead, including her commitment to democracy, her secular views, the blowback it will create for Musharraf, and her gender. Beyond that, Zinni says al-Qaeda — making marginal progress in Afghanistan, backsliding in Iraq, and rebuffed in Somalia — is looking for a new battlefield.

They’ve also allegedly claimed responsibility.

To an Indian this is just as obviously the ISI (i.e., Musharraf). That name describes a bogeyman commensurate with the Mossad or the KGB in that part of the world, with a long list of terrible deeds tallied up beneath it. And certainly Musharraf is a very credible suspect; we’ve seen in recent days that he is quite determined to hold onto power, and Bhutto was certainly a threat to that.

And - are these really alternatives? The ISI was instrumental in bringing al-Qaeda to the point where it is. It nursed on one teat the mujahideen movement in Afghanistan, serving as the main conduit for US money into the region.^* On the other teat clung the mewling babe that grew into the Taliban movement, brought up in madrassas all throughout Pakistan. They didn’t acquire the weapons and funding necessary to wrest misrule of Afghanistan from its savage and well-armed warlords by magic; tanks don’t grow on trees. (Much of this, ironically, went on during the reign of Benazir Bhutto.) And only after September 11 were there moves to divest the ISI of any trace of sympathy for either of these parties.

Was this effort sincere? Is Musharraf genuinely interested in reigning in these militants, or merely in playing a shell game that convinces the US he is doing what they want? I’ve always suspected the latter. His moves are too half-hearted, his purges temporary, his discipline mere gestures. And I’m not alone in being incredulous of the idea that the ISI was well and truly cleansed. And in this instance their interests are well-aligned.

Bhutto herself complained of specific individuals within the ISI who she thought were closely involved in her previous assassination attempts. At the very least the government is guilty of being lax, of looking the other way while interested parties tried to kill her. That much is fact.

Does it amount to conspiracy? Did Musharraf want Benazir Bhutto dead? Certainly we’re not going to get any useful information out of official investigations. We’ve known for decades that those do nothing to settle the question of who assassinated whom. I propose the following metric: If Musharraf postpones elections, then he is not guilty.

Commence twiddling thumbs.

Apparently this is more than a month old, but I never heard of it, so perhaps you didn’t, either. Here is a video of a private contractor, working for Aegis Defense Services, shooting at (and apparently killing) Iraqi civilians in cars. Pretty gruesome and horrible, so please, consider whether you actually want to watch this.

In a Guardian article discussing American mercenaries killing in Iraq:

After initially denying involvement, Aegis, run by former Scots Guard Lt. Col. Tim Spicer, issued a statement saying the shootings were legal and within rules-of-force protocols established by the now-defunct CPA. Those guidelines allow security guards to fire on vehicles that approach too close or too quickly. U.S. Army auditors, in their own investigation, agreed with Aegis.

The video link has an article below it discussing the matter, including the Army “investigation” absolving the shooter. The head of Aegis is a guy named Tim Spicer, who has a pretty sordid history as a mercenary. Technically these guys are in Iraq as “armed guards” providing security, and although there was an addition to the Geneva Conventions in 1977 outlawing the use of mercenaries, the United States is not a signatory.

Print this out and give it to your mom to read.

Tuesday morning I am in the shower before I am even awake, thinking about how the Sandman got his name as my heavy lids slide down over my eyes. We are in our hotel in Santa Fe, at the end of a brief but enjoyable sojourn. Our belongings are still half-scattered across the floor of the room. I seem to have misplaced a pair of boxers; somehow, I suspect the maid.
Read the rest of this entry »

Thank god we don’t live in an evil torture state! Remember, it’s okay for us to hold people indefinitely without rights if it’s not on American soil. We can do that without being an evil torture state. Hooray!

Some of you may have missed the fact that we started the Tribunal farce process in Guantanamo Bay, to finally give those terrorist scum the cursory dog-and-pony show they deserve. There was a lot of fanfare a few weeks back when Khalid Sheik Mohammed confessed to planning every single terrorist attack of the past ten years. They even released his testimony. Note how the names of the judges and all the court officers have been redacted from the record, just like in a real fair, impartial public trial!

Anyway, my point. A few months back I was throwing up in my mouth because someone made me remember that Khalid Sheik Mohammed’s kids were at one point in American custody, fate now unknown. Well, since then, we’ve heard a little bit more on the subject, in this rather disturbing letter from the father of one Majid Khan, formerly a legal resident of the United States, one-time guest at a CIA “black site”, and now cooling his heels at Guantanamo Bay. Majid’s father, who had no idea whether his son was alive or dead for the past few years, is submitting testimony to the Tribunal, not being allowed to attend himself. Just like in a real public trial! Ha ha!

[left eye twitches unsteadily]

Included therein is this nice little bit about those kids:

Also according to Mohammed [Majid’s brother, not KSM - ed], he and Majid were detained in the same place where two of Khalid Sheik Mohammed’s young children, ages about 6 and 8, were held. The Pakistani guards told my son that the boys were kept in a separate area upstairs, and were denied food and water by other guards. They were also mentally tortured by having ants or other creatures put on their legs to scare them and get them to say where their father was hiding.

Good to know they’re in such warm and tender hands.

Please disseminate this letter widely, so everyone can know what a wonderful, freedom-loving government we have.

In this morning’s paper I read that the Saudi Binladen group is constructing a giant hotel/shopping mall complex called Abraj al Bait across the street from the Masjid al Haram, the “Sacred Mosque” of Islam which houses the Ka’aba, the black stone building which is believed to be the first human house, constructed by Adam and later rebuilt by Abraham. The Abraj al Bait shopping center is a 600-retail outlet mall which includes a Tiffany’s, a Starbucks and an H&M.

As you might imagine, upon reading this story my hair curled and turned the color of ash and I vomited fire and blood all over the page and the room. But in case you cannot appreciate the reason for the violence of my reaction, in case some lingering doubt or foolhardiness prompts you to ask, “But, Saurabh, what’s so wrong with building a shopping mall there?”, let me elaborate.

Before:

After:

Images courtesy of Invincible Armor

One of the most prominent historical ironies was that which led to the Great Schism and the Protestant Reformation, the practice of selling indulgences. By allowing the sinner to escape punishment merely by dint of purchasing forgiveness, the Church created an additional, eighth Sin. Viz., Indulgence: wallowing in your own turpitude and loving it. This is the Sin that makes up the mortar in the construction of every shopping mall in the world. This is really what capitalism excels at. The clean, packaged product presented in a glass case, or framed by handsome stained wood furnishings. There are no bones or bits of skin, no drained, festering pits, no pools of foul liquids with only polysyllabic names. There is no guilt. Just the smiling face of the attendant who takes your money, and the satisfaction of your newly acquired pleasure.

Indulgence. Pay, and fear not.

And as with the corrupt Church that Martin Luther railed against, there is the opposing side: pay not, and be damned.

This is the world view that is making its introgression into Mecca, into the most sacred site in all of Islam, where millions of people come every year in the spirit of brotherhood. The hajj is the great equalizer - all Muslims must make the pilgrimage, if they can, and they should help those of their fellows who cannot. All are equal in their humility before god. Except, apparently, those who have money.

I am not a religious person, and I do not believe man should humble himself before god. But I do believe in culture. And while I might celebrate some reversals of culture in the Muslim world, this particular one cannot possibly appear to me as anything other than a retrogression.

Ah, but the salivating dogs have caught the sharp, metallic scent of coin. So let them build, and feast. We can have the bones.

Or rather, food for cars.

I found it strange a few days ago, in this transcript of a conversation between Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, that the two of them agreed that ethanol was a horrible waste. Their reasoning was one I haven’t heard articulated outside of the disgruntled mumblings of luddites:

Hugo Chávez.- Do you know how many hectares of corn it takes to produce one million barrels of ethanol?Fidel Castro.- Of ethanol, I think you talked about 20 million hectares the other day, something like that (Laughter), but remind me.

Hugo Chávez.- Twenty million. No, you are the one with the exceptional mind.

Fidel Castro.- Ah, 20 million. Well, of course, the idea of using food for producing fuel is tragic, it is dramatic. Nobody is certain about what is going to happen with food prices, when soy is becoming a fuel, with the need there is in the world to produce eggs, to produce milk, to produce meat, and it is one more tragedy of the many that exist at this time.

But then there’s this:

An increase in the cost of tortillas, a staple of the Mexican diet since the Maya ruled 1,000 years ago, has triggered a slump in the peso.

Tortilla prices jumped 5.9 percent in January, the most in eight years, after costs climbed for corn, the main ingredient. That increase fanned inflation and a bond market rout that curbed demand for the currency. The peso has fallen 2.3 percent in the past month, making it the world’s second-worst performer against the dollar among the 70 currencies tracked by Bloomberg…

The peso may fall further in the next several months as corn prices continue to rise. Corn has soared 16 percent in the past eight weeks and 121 percent since late 2005 as demand for the grain grows from ethanol producers.

That’s not to say there’s no debate on the subject. But it’s pretty remarkable. Of all the reasons for corn prices in Mexico to finally rebound from their Nafta-depressed state, this is the most depressing. A need to feed cars.

Note: this blog beat me to the discussion.

Update: Saurabh, in comments, spots the impresarios’ math error. What’s two orders of magnitude when you’re in charge of a whole damn country? The basic point remains — consumption of corn for fuel, or speculation on corn because it’s now trendy to see it as an energy commodity rather than a boring old grocery store item, is screwing up Mexico.