meehawl

I read that despite overwhelming security measures (more armed troops on London’s streets than at any time since World War 2) and a cordon sanitaire around his august person, King Bush is afraid of a very specific collection of agitators and is doing all he can to avoid having to encounter any of these disgraceful dissenters. These are, of course, Britain’s elected Members of Parliament. Afraid of being soundly heckled (as he was in the Australian Parliament), Bush has refused to address Britain’s Commons, or even the supine higher assembly, the House of Lords. What, exactly, is the point of a “State Visit” without an address to a country’s elected assembly? Blair and Bush are sending a clear signal that as far as they are concerned, the real centre of power in Britain definitely does not reside within the Commons. In the bad old pre-democratic centuries, it was okay to visit the PM, have tea with the Monarch, and maybe make a quick procession down the Embankment, so now I see where Bush’s policy of social regressivism is leading us…

GEORGE Bush was last night branded chicken for scrapping his speech to Parliament because he feared being heckled by anti-war MPs. The US president planned to give a joint address to the Commons and Lords during his state visit to Britain. But senior White House adviser Dr Harlan Ullman said: “They would have loved to do it because it would have been a great photo-opportunity. “But they were fearful it would to turn into a spectacle with Labour backbenchers walking out.”

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[Britain] has refused to grant diplomatic immunity to armed American special agents and snipers … The issue of immunity is one of a series of extraordinary US demands turned down … These included the closure of the Tube network, the use of US air force planes and helicopters and the shipping in of battlefield weaponry to use against rioters [including] a piece of military hardware called a ‘mini-gun’, which usually forms part of the mobile armoury in the presidential cavalcade. It is fired from a tank and can kill dozens of people. One manufacturer’s description reads: ‘Due to the small calibre of the round, the mini-gun can be used practically anywhere. This is especially helpful during peacekeeping deployments.’

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The Florida Supreme Court’s chief justice ordered Thursday that guarantees for speedy trials and court hearings will be suspended temporarily in Miami-Dade County because of next week’s free trade meetings.

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For an adult or child over 4 eating a daily diet of 2000 Calories, the recommended fat intake is 65 grams. This happy McDonald’s Meal deliver a refreshing 168% of the daily fat intake in one convenient sitting. And who says junk food doesn’t need nutrition labels?

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In Southern Iraq, on a summer’s night, in order to recover from the day’s heat, people in the village often sleep in the open air, underneath a starlit sky. Their peace is sometimes disturbed by a conclave of noisy jackals, some engaged in mating, others clamoring to be next, and a few simply quarrelling. After an hour or more it reaches a climax. By this time the noise and stench is unbearable. Suddenly, the animals depart. Next time they will meet elsewhere, but wherever and whenever they do, the villagers recall, with disgust, the nights disturbed by a ‘jackals’ wedding’.

Ali provides his readers with Youssef’s scathing indictment of the Iraqi collaborators, “The Jackals’ Wedding,” in English translation for the first time. The piece, written on the occasion of the creation of the collaborationist Iraqi Governing Council, and dedicated to fellow Iraqi poet in exile Mudhaffar al-Nawal, is now a big hit on the Iraqi street.

The Jackal’s Wedding*
O, Mudhaffar al-Nawab,
my life-long comrade
What are we to do about the jackals’ wedding?

You remember the old days
In the cool of the evening
under a bamboo roof
propped on soft cushions stuffed with fine wool
we’d sip tea (a tea I’ve never since tasted)
among friends…
Night falls as softly as our words
under the darkening crowns of the date palms
while smoke curls from the hearth, such fragrance
as if the universe had just begun

Then a cackling explodes
from the long grass and date palms –
the jackals’ wedding!

O, Mudhaffar al-Nawab -
today isn’t yesterday
(truth is as evanescent as the dream of a child) –
truth is, this time we’re at their wedding reception
yes, the jackals’ wedding
you’ve read their invitation:

For tho’ we trudge past Dahna** empty-handed
We depart Dareen** our purses line with gold
‘While the town folk attend to their affairs
Now, Zuraik** fleece them, quick as a fox!’

O, Mudhaffar al-Nawab,
let’s make a deal:

I’ll go in your place
(Damascus is too far away from that secret hotel…)
I’ll spit on their lists,
I’ll declare that we are the people of Iraq –
we are the ancestral trees of this land,
proud beneath our modest roof of bamboo.

- Saadi Youssef

*The pro-occupation gathering in July is now referred to as “The Jackals’ Wedding” by many Iraqis
** These are all references to pre-Islamic texts, often used in Arabic grammar text books

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This morning I listened to a spectacularly erudite and informative interview with Tariq Ali, pimping his new book Bush in Babylon: The Recolonisation of Iraq. Unfortunately, the interviewer Angie Coiro wasn’t so smart and, in a classic example of ethnic ignorance, seems to habitually confuse and conflate Arabs with Afghans. But despite her errors, Ali managed to get out some genuinely unique insights as he compares the current US/UK occupation with previous colonialist occupations of that territory dating back several centuries.

The big thing will happen is when the Shiite groups in the south of Iraq decide enough is enough and join the resistance and, when they do, it really will be the beginning of the end … All the indications are that they are getting very fed up. I mean, for Gods sake, in all the Shiite cities in the South, Najaf in particular, there are Polish troops there. What the hell are these Poles doing in Najaf? I mean, people are just bewildered by this and getting angry and they are very angry also in the southern the south of Iraq with the British presence. These are British troops who are coming back to occupy bases which they occupied in the 20s, 30s and 40s, so people are seeing a re-run of history, this time dominated by the United States … The targeting of the United Nations, which created shock-and-horror waves in the West, did not create the same did not have the same results in the Arab World, because everyone knows the role the United Nations has played in sustaining the sanctions for twelve years, which cost the lives of half a million kids, according to UNESCO-figures, and sanctioned the weekly bombing raids by the United States and Britain of that country for twelve years prior to the occupation, so, even if you talk to ordinary Iraqis, they hold the UN responsible for policing the sanctions.

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The US Congress is poised to transform the relationship between [international] studies and the US government … The government, when the President signs HR 3077 into law, will now create an International Education Advisory Board made up of members of the Department of Defense, the National Security Agency and Homeland Security “to increase accountability by providing advice, counsel, and recommendations to Congress on international education issues for higher education.” In other words, the government wants our students to enter a War Corps, to provide the translators, the intelligence analysts and others who will do the bidding of this era’s Evangelical Imperialism.

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Lund has a rare condition that prominent sexual medicine researchers have just “discovered” and begun to document. They have given it a name — Persistent Sexual Arousal Syndrome — and are trying to develop treatments for it, so far with patchy success … patients sustain unrelenting physical arousal, no matter how many orgasms they have. They are not nymphomaniacs; they do not experience desire. Rather, they feel the vaginal congestion and pulsation of arousal, and it is not about pleasure … “It’s just a horror,” said Lila, a 71-year-old woman who has had the syndrome since brain and bladder surgery in 1999, and said she often has 200 small orgasms a day … “This never stops, it never lets up,” she said, and it ruins everything, including car travel, dinner parties, and simply sitting on the couch.

I was constantly feeling overwelming sensations of sexual arousal, which were purely physical and not accompanied by romantic or sexual fantasies; basically the need to have repeated orgasms which was never relieved by normal orgasmic experience. I could have one after the other and within minutes feel like I never had one in the first place. There didn’t seem to be any sufficient number of orgasms I could have to make the sensation go away. I was completely insatiable and it was DREADFUL!!! I’m on disabilty for chronic lyme disease and am not currently working, so I would spend day after day masturbating and showering and masturbating and showering.

Orgasms started spontanteously and constantly without any stimulation. To this day I have throbbing orgasms and extreme pressure to relieve them all the time … I get so blue sometimes, I don’t want to go out. Sitting in a restaurant with friends does not give me any pleasure because of the throbbing. I’ve spoken to all my physicians and no one has any help for me. I can cause an orgasm by the simple act of gently moving my leg up and down and that gives five minutes of relief.

It starts with high fever, after two months all symptoms left and I was pining away again for this jerk. Six months later when I saw him, I had a bad cold. BIg mistake this time I ended up with PSAS, and it has never gone away. I remember two weeks after sex with him, my clitoris would not go down at all after masterbation, I realize I have always had this. In highschool three orgasms and it was over and into my mid 20′s, I traveled Europe three orgasms and it went down, but it slowly increased to 10 orgasms, then 20, and by the time the age of 30 it was 40 orgasms, which I could finish an hour and a half after sex by myself. I am married, but the condition has gotten worse, at the peak of it, it would last two days, with me masterbating 100 times, three times a day.

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The animals are in a pitiful condition. Many are confined to tiny pens, struggling to move; some look terrified, others have ulcerated lesions or cuts on their flesh. The corpse of a piglet rots alongside live sows. Maggots swarm over its decomposing flesh. A number of the animals are suffering from infections … Pregnant sows are held for weeks at a time in small farrowing crates – narrow metal cages only inches wider than the animal. The sows are unable to turn and can only stand up, lie down or suckle their piglets once they are born. The crates are designed to maximise productivity, and ultimately drive down the cost of meat … up to 95 per cent of the [pigs] reared each year for meat are factory-farmed, with many kept in confined farrowing crates.

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UK’s Buck House Even Better Photo Op Than Aircraft Carrier!

Bush’s trip can hardly be described as routine. He will be the first US president to come here on a state visit – with all the extra lashings of ceremony and royal red carpet that that term implies … Working visits are common enough, but a royal welcome is not given easily: Bill Clinton had to wait till his final month in office before he had an invitation to take tea at Buckingham Palace. Bush will be staying there as a house guest … “Look, Americans don’t know shit. They’re not going to recognise the prime minister of the Philippines. The only foreign leaders they could pick out are the Queen of England and the Pope – and we’ve already got those pictures.” With the Pontiff in the can, the Queen is the co-star the president needs.

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