Nothing Is Sacred, Thank God

Readers of The Running Mule have often discerned a biased and admiring bent towards the rabble rousing of Christopher Hitchens. For reasons more than just the fact that he smokes in the shower, I find his dialectic and demeanor engaging but then I drink lot. What you probably don't know is that one my favorite books is The Satanic Verses. I received a copy for X-Mas 1988 after traveling for some months in the Middle East and was been blown away by Salman Rushdie's mastery of language. It reminded me of my father's favorite tale of power run amok, Bulgakov's The Master and the Margarita and made me curious about Islam in a positive way. I even began reading the Koran. But just then the Ayatollah Khomeini issued the fatwa that commanded the world's Muslims to kill Rushdie for the blasphemous crime of having written The Satanic Verses. I was dumbfounded. Khomeini must be crazy and I thought, 'fuck him,' no one will go along with this medieval hypocrisy. But now I see (more clearly) that I must have been the one who was crazy. Crazy to believe people were free of the fear organized religion preys upon. What an asshole I am. Haha.

Anyway, I was overjoyed to see Hitchens had written of Rushdie in the most recent Vanity Fair. It reinvigorated my affinity for his work but also reminded me of the horrible loss the world has suffered because of this islamic demagoguery. Please read Assassins of the Mind. It's got all the markings of a best seller: perverse religiosity, murdered innocents, armies of zombies at the ready, state-sponsored terrorism and a very real threat to cultural freedom of expression. I am gonna dig out a copy of The Satantic Verses tuck it under my arm a parade up and down Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn cuz blasphemy can go to goddamn hell.

Every Wonder How This Shit Gets Started

Politics, racism, and religious prejudice play a big part in the magic that is the Holy Land, a place where any morning can be the 3rd Century BCE complete with rocks flying at your head and prophets at the ready to steal your soul.

According to the NYTs, this latest violence between Hamas and the State of Israel appears to have been timed to coincide with the final days of a complicit Bush Presidency. And with the new intel about competitive reading in the White House it seems certain the coast is clear as Bush and the Turd-Blossom busy themselves with a good book.















and tragically for the innocents there is no place to fucking hide

I'm All Lost In This SuperMarket

The Washington Post's coverage of how the mad scientists of Wall Street brought world financial financial markets to the brink of collapse is a real humdinger. It's a tale of a little guy, in this case a gal, with the unlikely name of Brooksley E. Born, telling Wall Street legends Alan Greenspan, the then Federal Reserve Chairman, Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt Jr. that derivative swaps where a dark market shell game poising an enormous danger to the world's financial system. The fellas however had made too much money playing unregulated to be swayed by her "sky is gonna fall" exhortations. So they merely hung fire and banked.

The section of the story surrounding the devise and implementation of AIG's "Beautiful Machine," the very system which tindered the whole meltdown, makes for a particularly compelling read even for those of us who didn't attend the Wharton School of Business. In short, their craftily created credit default swaps are to three-card monte what Bernard Madoff is to me losing a 2.95 service charge to the ATM. Magnitudinaly different short cons.

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Zimbabwean Coffin Biz Booming

Cholera Is Raging, Despite Mugabe’s Denial

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Do The Collapse Zimbabwe

New York Cares

Review of the Party from the scientists at Street Carnage

A Clean Room Is A Sign of Perversity

In the BBC News Magazine, Clive James delves in why a neat and tidy room is useless for the busy mind. While this slideshow sampling of photographs from Eamonn McCabe's Writers' Room Project is a simpler exercise if your busy in the body.

Do The Collapse Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe has been a country for 28 years but it looks like the honeymoon is over. It's hard to say the place is even on the brink of collapse so far down is the situation. The former Southern Rhodesia is a place famous in the British book of imperialist venture. A land renowned for hunting and exploration. Robert Baden-Powell's scouting movement, the parent to Boy Scouts of America was founded there. But few would argue that the 20th century has been a spiraling nightmare for the former British colony as mercenaries fought brutal unending wars all across Africa in attempts to prop up white rule. Since Zimbabwe's creation at the end of Rhodesian Bush War it has gotten progressively uglier and uglier. President Robert Mugabe once thought to be a savior not only for Zimbabwe but all of black Africa has run place into the ground, chasing success away at the expense of authoritarian control. All semblance of order, economy or national direction is lost. It's clear Mugabe is no boy scout though neither was Cecil Rhodes nor Ian Smith leaders of white rule in Rhodesia before him. The stories of war are so entertwined with place that even a hippie like Warren Zevon penned a song, Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner about the dark mayhem Africa has lived through. See also the Congo

The Mugabe of today is an obvious tyrant living an "Emperor's New Clothes" existence. Jimmy Carter said yesterday from a news conference in Johannesburg, South Africa.

I think it's the established policy of the Mugabe government that there's no crisis in Zimbabwe. The entire basic structure in education, healthcare, feeding people, social services and sanitation has broken down. These are all indications that the crisis in Zimbabwe is much greater, much worse than we had ever imagined.

And now we find a country with no health controls locked in the grasp of a cholera epidemic that's threatening to decimate hoards of people. And there is no cavalry, no one is coming to Zimbabwe's rescue. Sometimes its hard to imagine this kind of shit. Endless death shits.

Do The Collapse is of course reference to a Guided by Voices record produced by Ric Ocasek. The album signaled GBV's ditching of the lo-fi Dayton sound for promise of the big time. Hopefully, someday Zimbabwe can ditch its lo-fi history and turn a corner to peace and prosperity but until then, don't drink the water brother!

Frontline has some incredible resources about Zimbabwe and the disasters of Mugabe

UPDATE: A death warrant has been issued with immediate effect to all Zimbabweans following the closure of major government hospitals and clinics countrywide.