In New Orleans, All is Going According to Plan

In New Orleans, All is Going According to Plan. But the question is whose plan is it? To find out, we have but to recall the ironically prophetic words of Grover Norquist, one of the driving cardinals of America’s Neoconservative movement. It was, after all, Norquist who proposed making “the federal government so small that it can be drowned in a bathtub.” And so the federal government has been remade in the Neoconservative image, with socialism for the ultra wealthy and ruthless survival-of-the-fittest capitalism for everyone else. George W. Bush, clown prince figurehead of the Neoconservative movement, came to us five years ago promising to be a reformer with results. Reformed he did, and the world now can barely believe the results.

From London to Singapore, people are watching the events in the Gulf States unfold and asking collectively

“What the fuck…has the American government really lost the ability to protect its own cities, its own citizens?”

An article in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post said that Dubya’s last minute cancellation of a planned state reception for Chinese leader Hu Jintao was the result of his preoccupation with "struggling to regain control of the Gulf States". A German television news team looked on in disgust – and caught on film - the assembly and disassembly of what they called "a Potemkin rescue village" built specifically to provide a backdrop for a presidential photo-op. And in China (where a similar-sized metropolis facing a similar disaster on the same week was evacuated with relative efficiency and a low casualty rate), people are discussing how, in China, egregious governmental incompetence in the face of natural disasters historically heralds dynastic collapse. Might the same might prove true in America?

Certain questions come up over and over: Why were the levees on which the city was dependent left criminally underfunded? Why were there no plans to evacuate the citizens of New Orleans who didn’t have cars? Why did the federal government wait so long to intervene? But the question raised most often isn’t why but what, namely what excuse does a rich and powerful nation have for failing to protect its own city and citizens? The answer is at once grim and obvious: the destruction of New Orleans was not merely allowed…it was planned.

Bush clan matriarch Barbara Bush’s recent comment made during a post-disaster photo op through the Houston Astrodome laid bare the racist, fuck the poor philosophy of the first family. Her obtuse comment ("So many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them") outlined perfectly the neoconservative view that only the ultra wealthy are truly entitled to (or even able to fully appreciate) life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. To the Marquise De Bush, it seems natural that any peasant would prefer life under armed guard in a sports arena to the “squalor” of home. To their way of thinking, the hurricane was a blessing in disguise to the “lower class” denizens of New Orleans. Why should anyone be surprised at the idea that an administration that shares these ideals might allow a combination of natural disaster and planned negligence to hasten the re-shaping of any American city into one that better fits into their vision of what an American city should be?

It was, after all, this cabal that systematically cut funding from the flood control system on which the city relied, and then held back the rescue operations while the city drowned in its own filth. Not since Chinag Kai-shek’s Nationalist troops fled Nanjing before the approaching Japanese army has a government so callously abandoned its own citizens. And now that New Orleans’ poor, lower middle class, and yes – largely black citizenry dispersed, the administration can get to the real work: Handing out lucrative contracts to its cronies to “rebuild” New Orleans (the same bunch currently “rebuilding” Iraq) in its own desired image. The “New” New Orleans that will rise on the waterlogged ashes of the old as a gentrified, Disney-esque parody of its former self. Bush cronies will be awarded the leases to all the buildings in the French Quarter (to be renamed the Freedom Quarter) in exchange for their loyalty and continued support of the Republican Party. On Bourbon street, “genuine Negro musicians” will be bussed in from out of town to provide entertainment for a new, more upscale breed of tourist.

The only silver lining – and a slim one at that – is that the damage wrought by Katrina might wake America to the fact that Bush and his cabal are intent on bleeding the nation dry in order to turn certain parts of it into Disneylands for the super rich. If so, New Orleans might one day be remembered as the Neocon’s Waterloo. If not – if the nation allows itself to be propagandad and photo-opped back to sleep, than more and worse is certainly on the way. After all, as George W. Bush himself famously said, "Our enemies never stop thinking of new ways to harm our people, and neither do we."

Americans laughed, thinking their idiot emperor was making yet another witless grammatical error when in fact he was making an earnest statement of intent.

From the Desk of George W. Bush, President of the United States

I’m off for my yearly colon cleansing, and since it’s clear that GWB is going to use the upcoming senate recess to name John Bolton as Ambassador to the United Nations, I – in a move worthy of Philip K. Dick - have gone ahead and pre-emptively hacked into Karl Rove’s laptop (his passwords are well known in Washington – the man can’t keep a secret for shit) and retrieved the gloat email that Dubya will be sending him on the following week the appointment. All nicknames are, as our Australian friends say, fair dinkum (almost). ~ Bangs

From the Desk of George W. Bush,
President of the United States
August 15, 2005

To: Karl Rove

TB,

Gotta hand it to you, you’re slippier than owl shit on a car hood in August. What was it, three weeks ago even Big Time was telling me to cut you loose? Waltzed into the oval office as if he lived there –like that’s going to happen! –told me “Think about the gravity of the situation, George. Karl might galvanatize the electorate in 2006. Think about your legacy…” Bought up the whole thing with Kenny Boy, too, but I told him that we got through that just fine without dumping old friends when the going got rough for ‘em. Then I told him to get out of my office. He’s been starting to get that downright hangdog look about him lately, what do you think? He is one of Poppy’s friends, after all. But still, I was worried myself, what with the way the liberal media’s been bird-dogging you all summer. The press corpse was just refusing to give suck-up (that’s my new name for Scott, you like it? I miss Dodgeball myself…he was slippery too. Why did he leave again?) a break about you. Hell, TB, I was worried I was actually going to have to do something drastical, like send you out to pasture with Ballonfoot or make you ambassador to Russia or something (that’d have been a bad idea - last time you and Pootie-poot got together the two of you cleaned out all the Vodka on air force one and tried to fly the damned thing). Anyway, Condi told me to sit tight, that’d you’d think of something to take the media’s mind off, and low and behold, you came through again. Naming Bolton as UN ambassador while Senate was on summer recess was brilliant, really killed two birds with one stone. One confirmation down, you’re yesterday’s news, and the press has Bolton to chew on. I’m going to give him a name right now – Ambassador Kick-Ass. You like it? Did you see the look on Coffee’s face when AKA presented his credentials? It was like I’m Ambassador Bolton, and I’m here to open up a big-gulp sized can of whoop ass on your little institute.

Now all I need to think about is getting Judge Whitey in, and that should be a shoe-in. The guys got less edge to him than safety scissors. Even El Puerco won’t shut up about it (not that he ever does, about anything. I swear the only time his mouth stop moving is when he’s eating or swallowing percodans). One day you’ve got to bring him around to seeing the big picture.

Anyway, another brilliant move, Turd Blossom. Just lay low for a little while, OK. Next time you want to out a CIA operative, come tell me about it first.

- W



"I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the names of our [intelligence] sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors."
Former President George HW Bush

Yahuda Bangs’ guide to Buying Cultural Revolution Paraphernalia

With all the recent buzz about Jung Chang’s & Jon Halliday’s new book "Mao: The Unknown Story," I thought I’d pipe in my two fen with by giving credit where credit is due and acknowledging the one thing that sinophiles can indisputably thank the Great Helmsman for besides murderous famines, endless purges, failed economic policy and two decades of cheesy mainland movies starring Mao-look-alike Gu Yue. I’m talking about the abundance of cheap, readily available, and easy to shove in a suitcase gift items that friends and family back home find so very China, namely Cultural Revolution Paraphernalia.

Crap from that tortured yet fascinating period in modern Chinese history makes a great gift for unsuspecting friends, and thanks to the fact that for nearly a decade nearly all of China’s industry switched gears from producing useful things to churning out revolutionary junk, you can almost always find something to bring home to gift-hungry loved ones. Such items are of great cultural interest to Sinophiles, so naturally, a cottage industry has sprung up among former Red Guards, who, in an ironic twist of fate have switched gears from shouting anti-capitalist slogans and destroying anything that seemed foreign to making a living selling their now-useless revolutionary paraphernalia to foreigners.

But what to buy, and what did it mean back when it actually meant something? The GPCR produced endless posters with revolutionary slogans like "Destroy the four olds," "Bombard the headquarters" and, towards the waning years, "The glorious people’s revolution is really out of control now!" And of course, there are Little Red “Quotations of Chairman Mao” books; these fit neatly into a breast pocket and come in a variety of moldering fragrances.

But most popular with the political history tourist are the once-ubiquitous Mao Tse-tung badges, which can be found in a variety of different styles. Some of these badges feature the Great Helmsman from the neck up, while others show a full-body shot of him exhorting the masses to great deeds. Though vaguely identical to the untrained eye, each badge in fact presented its own political message. The most common Mao badge you’re likely to find presents the Chairman looking leftward. Back in the day, such badges were interpreted by the masses to mean "Mao is looking leftward, the masses too, must all look to the left, and persecute anyone more politically right wing than Trotsky!" You should be able to get the left-looking Mao badges cheaply, as this particular item represented 30% of China’s gross domestic output from the late sixties.

Slightly harder to find (and thus not quite as worthless) are badges showing Mao looking to the right. This pose was interpreted as the Great Helmsman extorting the masses to do a kind of political hokey-pokey maneuver; that is, pull the left foot in, stick the right foot out. But at this point, rather than shaking anything about, the masses were meant to look to their fellow dancers and kick the living shit out of anyone unlucky enough to be on the wrong foot. (The GPCR was particularly rough on dyslexics.)

Of course, most unique among Cultural Revolution badges are those showing Mao Tse-tung looking straight ahead. Though Halliday and Chang don’t mention it in their book, its quite likely these were meant to be interpreted as Mao actually mocking the people, saying "Look in front of you, you idiots! There’s absolutely nothing left. You’ve fucking gone and destroyed everything!"

Then Mao died, proving the old adage about he who laughs last, and the badges and books got stuffed in the dresser drawers of the great proletariat masses, behind the underwear, or where the underwear would have been if all the underwear factories hadn’t been burned down in 1969. Now of course, with Chinese industrial output threatening to outstrip that of the rest of the world’s squared, and China increasingly a magnet for tourists and get rich quick types alike, the badges, posters and little red books are relegated to that special category of item known the world over as quaintly useless tourist junk. Bringing some of this stuff home from gives the term "Chinese take-away" a whole new meaning. Actually being able to interpret its meaning to the recipients grants instant "China expert" cache, hiding the fact that you actually spent most of your time in China bargaining down hookers in Shanghai and smoking vast tracts of Yunnan province.

Has Yoga become too Commercialized?

Editor’s note: In recent weeks, our correspondent Yahuda Bangs had become fixated with the yoga studio adverts covering the entire first section of the midlevels escalator. He seemed to take particular offense with the life-sized portraits showing locally famous yogi “Master Kamal” performing some impossible feet of flexibility while large yellow letters beneath tout the “sexiness” of yoga. When Yahuda wrote promising to “take that yoga Svengali down a notch”, we assumed that he intended to write an editorial about the cheap commercialization of Yoga. Apparently, he had something else in mind, as late last week Mr. Bangs (likely spurned on by a bad reaction to recently prescribed experimental medications to combat the Attention Deficit Disorder for which he is famous) burst into a packed Ashtanga Yoga class being taught by Master Kamal and challenged the master to a “yoga battle”. According to the accounts of horrified students, our correspondent strutted around the classroom shouting things like “I AM THE MOST SERENE” and “FEEL MY PRANAYAMA AND KNOW PAIN” before running like a crazed linebacker towards the front of the class. But before Bangs could reach Kamal (we assume this was his intent), he slipped on a sweaty yoga mat and landed head first, putting himself into a coma from which he has yet to recover. Thus, this week’s Angry American Abroad column on the subject "has yoga become too commercialized" has been guest-written by Sylvia Bangs, Yahuda’s mother, who has flown into HK to assist in her son’s recovery.

…Is this thing on? Oy! I tell you, my son…who does he think he is trying to attack a man who by the looks of it can balance his entire body weight on his penis? Mashugga, and you should be ashamed for encouraging him! Canned Revolution? Who every heard of such a thing? But my Yahuda has always been a sensitive boy. And this block-long advertisement that runs up the entire escalator? Such dreck! Using sex to sell yoga? Feh…listen bubbie, I know a thing or two. You can’t tell to look at me today, but many years ago, before I met my darling late husband, Mordechai Bangs (God rest his soul!), I was the top-earning exotic dancer at very swank club in the meatpacking district of New York City. I remember the first thing the manager told me the night he hired me…”Sylvia,” he said “these men are here for one thing, tits and lap-dances. And that is what you are selling, but you must never admit it.” And so I learned the meaning of a word apparently not in this so-called “Master” Kamal’s dictionary, namely subtlety. A suggestive wiggle here, a wink there… But this Kamal person, every six feet with his almost naked picture, posing and flexing and stretching and prancing? What, he learned some yoga and now he thinks he’s a Mapplethorpe model? Please! Such drek. And on the other side is the advertisement for something called “hot yoga”? In the old days we called this torture, now someone is getting rich by making people exercise in a hot room? Mashugga! And that’s another thing…I understand that behind all the spiritual mumbo-jumbo, some of these yoga people are cutthroat businesspeople, driving around in Rolls Royce Limousines and wearing million-dollar Rolex watches. Such a sham I tell you! But I’m just an old woman with silicone implants; nobody listens to a person like me. Anyway, I have the jet lag, and I can’t find the Fox channel on my son’s television so I’m going to stop writing now. And you should all be ashamed of yourselves for encouraging my Yahuda to be a bum! You can rot in hell for all I care…

Sodmized by China Travel Service

Yahuda Bangs is back after a brief but enforced holiday in a bullet-proof cupboard with fellow religious edict victim, Salman Rushdie, after his recent stance on the new papal candidate. This week he expounds on sodomy, visas, the image of the US abroad and matters cognate.


Had you been in the office of the China Travel Service office in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong about an hour before closing on Thursday afternoon, you may have heard something akin to an involuntary intake of air followed by a low, squealing moan. If you thought this was the dulcet tone of a forced sodomy occurring in the back room, you wouldn’t have been far off the mark. It was in fact the sound of your humble correspondent watching a vast sum of money evaporating from his bank account to pay for a one-year multiple entry visa into the People’s Republic of China : HK$1900 (US$244) to be exact, for a visa that a few years ago cost one third, and was less restrictive to boot. Nineteen hundred Hong Kong Dollars buys a lot of squealing.

In this the year of our lord 2005, the first full year of the second term of the Bush Junta, Americans are finding themselves as welcome abroad as the proverbial turd in a punch bowl. And in China, the blue-backed American passport, once as universally welcome as the greenback which its bearers were assumed to carry in great quantity, increasingly brings the American visitor not a friendly nod and a quick stamp but scorn, a raised eyebrow, and increasingly large visa fees.

In April of last year the central government issued the decree that Americans were no longer to be issued business visas in Hong Kong, but instead were to return to their home country and apply through official channels. This has since been relaxed somewhat, to the point where Americans can now get a one year business visa in Hong Kong, but only if they meet the following criteria: First, their passports have to already contain two or more recently issued China visas. And second, they have to be prepared to shell out a whopping sum of money, two to three times that paid by Australian, Canadian or New Zealand nationals. And even then, American business visa holders are only allowed to stay in China for a maximum of 30 days (a restriction not imposed on aforementioned visa holders).

Last year’s visa restrictions for Americans were ostensibly in retaliation for new regulations from the US State Department requiring that Chinese visitors — along with all everyone else from outside fortress USA — be fingerprinted. As for the next round of restrictions and visa price hikes, it won’t be too hard for the Chinese government to find some excuse to impose collective economic punishment on travelling subjects of our increasingly belligerent and unpopular administration. From threats to the Chinese economy to continued military expansion in Central Asia and the Pacific, the Bush administration is doing its best to ensure that Americans in China will continue to receive least-favoured nation status at the visa office for years to come. But are these restrictions really in response to anything in particular or is China imposing them simply because it can? A weak nation needs all the friends it can get, but a strong one can pick and chose — and China is definitely becoming stronger by the year. And a country with clout remembers well those who tried to keep it down when it was still weak.

So for the foreseeable future, I, along with my fellow American-born Sinophiles will continue to pay big bucks for the privilege of entering China, while Canadians, Australians, and most European nationals are still welcome with open arms for a comparatively small tribute. Notably absent from China’s new international embrace are the British; China hasn’t yet forgiven Opium Wars one and two, so the British will be bent over the visa counter alongside their erstwhile Yank allies. Vaseline anyone?

Seig Heil Mary!

Today Canned Revolution received a telephone call from international Correspondent Yahuda Bangs. Having gone to Rome to cover the papal proceedings, Bangs, utilizing his patented “Naïve Portuguese Choirboy” disguise, was able to actually sneak into a private Papal auditorium, where he was able to watch the new pope in actual rehearsal for his first-ever Papal mass. Sadly, Bangs was caught after only a few minutes, but before being apprehended, he managed to place a call with his Nokia camera phone and transmit not just chunks of the new pope’s speech, but also grainy video footage offering fascinating insight into the character of the man once known as The Iron Cardinal. The following is a transcript of that call:


….Guten Tag mein damen und Herren. Heil Me! Ah ha ha ha…I make eins kleine joke. But seriously. (sounds of nervous laugher from assembled cardinals).

...On the occasion of mein first mass as zie holy fuhr, er, father, I take as mein sermon subject zat of purity. As new pope, maintaining purity of the holy church will be priority number eins! Deviation from orthodoxy vill not be tolerated! (Pope clears throat, adjusts monocle) As you all know, I have been for years Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is, in mein eyes a namby-pamby 11 syllable phrase for inquisition. Woo, scary, Ja? Inquisition. Under my charge, the Congregation made significant headway in rolling back the heresies of liberal humanism throughout zie world, and of rolling back any traces of modernism within the holy church. Und zis iz zie way we shall continue. Ja, it is true. Under me, our church vill be “medieval”…but without the evil. (stifled laughter). Vas ist, you don’t like that joke? OK, I can take it out. (scratching sounds, rustling paper). Under mein papacy, homosexuality und buggery amongst Catholics will be VERBOTTEN! (nervous coughing) Ach, don’t get your panties in a bunch, Law. Of course I am not referring to the American clergy. Don’t ask, don’t tell, eh? Why can’t all American priests be like Deniro in Sleepers, eh? Now there was a real priest (nervous coughing, sounds of rustling paper). Ja, law, you are more a Kevin Bacon man, eh? Ha ha, I joke, I joke. OK, moving right along. (clears throat).

Mein predecessor, John Paul will always be remembered as the Pontiff who brought down Left wing communism in Europe. Not too toot mein own horn here, but I, too, helped to put a bit of the old…what is that phrase the kids all use now (New Pope thoughtfully runs finger along his dueling scar)…smack down? Ja, the smack down on the left wing liberalism in America just last year by releasing a well publicized memo to American Bishops telling them that they must refuse holy communion to pro-choice candidates. Right before the election, too, ja? Put the holy jack-boot right into the Democrat’s humanist knickies, ja? Separation of church and state? Ha! Not on my watch. Take that, Thomas Jefferson. (Unknown cardinal approaches Pope, whispers. Scratching on paper). Well, I liked that line…. (clears throat). Und Jetzt, a subject near and dear to mein old heart, namely the subject of moral relativism. On this subject, let me be perfectly clear. MORAL RELATIVISM IST VERBOTTEN. EINS KIRCHE! EINS GLAUBENSSYSTEM! EINS PAPST! SEIG HEIL MARY! SEIG HEIL MARY! (Assembled cardinals salute clearly agitated pope as he bangs scepter on podium, Pope takes swig from chalice.) As a boy in Deutschland, I served in the Hitler Jungen…er Catholic Youth Club, and back then we had no need for those who questioned authority. And I say we still don’t. Do we have any questions? Nicht? Gut. Moving along….

(at this point, International correspondent Yahuda Bang’s telephone emits a shrieking sound mysteriously reminiscent of Iron Butterfly’s In-A-Gadda Da Vida. The last shot transmitted is that of Swiss Guards rushing towards his hiding place.)

Was ist? Devil’s music?

(There is a brief scuffle, and the last audio transmitted is of screaming in Swiss. We have not heard from Bangs since, and can only assume that he would want this transcript to run unedited.)

Angry American Abroad was originally published as part of Canned Revolution's Little Red Email of Monday, April 25, 2005. Visit Canned Revolution online & sign up for the Little Red Email at http://www.cannedrevolution.com/.

Clueless Americans Suck up Chinese Clichés

Sifting through American media for stories about China I’m reminded of something P.J. O’ Rourke wrote nearly two decades ago about the western media’s “discovery” of Eastern Europe shortly before the fall of the Soviet Union. In a story about Warsaw in the 1980’s, O’Rourke quotes a media savvy Pole as saying of the objectives of Western media coverage of Poland

“Your articles show that there are no polar bears walking the streets”*

Twenty years later, and despite the fact that the Western Media has far more interest (not to mention reporters on the ground) in China, most articles written about China seem to be about how – despite preconceived Western notions - there are no panda bears walking the streets of Shanghai and Beijing. In other words, we thought they were different, but really they’re just like us. With the exception of coverage of a few hard news events (the current anti-Japanese demonstrations, for example), most articles written by casual journalists traveling through China are hopelessly clichéd, trite fluff pieces that amount to nothing wrapped in a word count.

Recently, well known New York securities mogul Henry Blodget traveled to China to do a series of articles for Slate Magazine. Known best for his zealous stock recommendations during the dot-com heyday (and subsequent discrediting when the bubble burst), Blodget had apparently, in the waning months of 2004, caught wind of the fact that China might - just might - be ripe for investment. Like a bloodhound on the trail of aging leftovers, Blodget left for China, apparently enthusiastic after discovering that not only are foreigners now allowed to use regular money (as opposed to Waihuijuan, better known as Foreign Exchange Certificates or FEC, which foreigners in China were forced by law to use before the law was scrapped in 1994) but that Mao suits are now only an optional fashion accessory.

Being a Slate reader, I followed Blodget’s journey with great interest, hopeful that this nominally progressive online newsmagazine might finally be breaking new ground in American media coverage of China. Disappointment came quickly as it became evident that Blodget’s skill for stating the obvious (one Forbes article refers to Blodget as “Merrill Lynch’s Master of the Obvious”) had only grown sharper with age. Hitting the ground with both feet running in Hong Kong, Blodget noted that there were no longer junks in Hong Kong harbor (not actually true, but he made this observation from the deck of the Star Ferry), and that Hong Kongers ate strange food. After a promising article about how the Shanghai mag-lev is fast, not terribly convenient, and losing money hand over fist, Blodget regales Slate’s readership of millions with that most worn-out of westerners-writing-about-China clichés, China’s abundance of fake DVDs. This is the cut-and-paste template for journalists wanting to write something “interesting” about China without going more than four blocks from their hotel and/or tourists looking for something to send to their email list. Finally, in his latest expose, Blodget travels from Beijing to discovers what my 11 year old niece in America already knows: Chinese peasants are poor.

Perhaps I’m being a bit unfair to Mr. Blodget, who is neither a professional journalist or a seasoned China veteran. And perhaps it was foolish of me to expect anything better from Slate; after all, this is the magazine that just a few weeks ago ran a number of editorial cartoons about Tung Chee-hwa in a section titled “China vs. Taiwan” (and didn’t bother to correct their error even after being informed that TCH’s stepping down was an unrelated issue). Unfortunately, Slate’s innocent abroad approach to China is typical of most American news outlets reporting from the world’s most populated, fastest growing, and (many argue) most economically important country: Dole out without fail a steady diet of no-calorie pap that, with very few exceptions, says nothing that hasn’t been said ad naseum before.

This is a shame, and for two reasons: First, few places on earth are as replete with change (both good and bad) and newsworthy stories (ditto) as China in this decade. And second, lacking practical knowledge about China, only the most educated Americans will know whether Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei or Hong Kong offer the best opportunities for potential English teachers, exotic maids, or strippers when the American economy finally collapses in the next decade.



* Excerpted from “What do they do for fun in Warsaw” - Rolling Stone, 1986



Angry American Abroad #2 originally published as part of Canned Revolution's Little Red Email of Monday, April 11, 2005. Visit Canned Revolution online & sign up for the Little Red Email at http://www.cannedrevolution.com/.

Angry American Abroad #1

Watching the world react with naked loathing to the appointment of John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations and then the appointment of Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank, one is reminded of what Stalin reportedly said to a timid advisor who warned that his persecution of Soviet Catholics might invoke papal ire. "Fuck the pope.” He was said to have growled “How many divisions does the Pope have?"

Stalin had little use for subtlety in international diplomacy, and Dubya, wired to the gills on a serious war and control buzz, openly mocks both subtlety and diplomacy. And why shouldn’t he? To the serious cocaine and ego fiend, half the fun is getting away with it. With each new outrage the world press react like Margaret Dumont confronted by a crude and lascivious Groucho Marx. “John Bolton as UN Ambassador?” gasps a clearly insulted world “Why, sir, that’s preposterous! “Paul Wolfowitz as World Bank head…well, we never!” And from the White House, the laughter just keeps rolling. A fish rots from the head down, and even in GWB isn’t calling all the shots himself, the Bush administration possesses it’s titular figurehead’s cocaine fiend predilection for wanting to push shock value for all it’s worth. Dick Cheney attends an Auschwitz memorial dressed like a mildly retarded Midwestern Zamboni operator; world opinion gasps petulantly. A few weeks later Condoleeza Rice puts Old Europe in its place decked out in dominatrix regalia; the response is more huffy shock. A disappointed Dubya must feel like a mid-90’s Marylyn Manson, asking himself ‘What do I need to do to get a rise from these square-headed mother-fuckers?’

So he appoints a man well known to loathe the UN to act as its American envoy one week, and the next week taps a man scorned worldwide as a warmonger (and a unsuccessful one at that, whose unbroken record of failure in every endeavor stretches back to the Reagan administration) to head the World Bank. Still, the best reaction the world can muster is a collective ice-cold “Really, Mr. Bush…We’ve never been so insulted!" The strategy being taken by the administration is clear to anyone with the guts to look at it head on. Through continual application of shock, the world becomes numb to the horror of the big picture. But shock value is a lot like heroin addiction - maintaining the same buzz means continually upping the dosage, and the Bush administration has three more years to keep the world off balance.

Secret pillow talk overheard at a recent all-night Vaseline and amyl nitrate orgy attended by Jeff Gannon reveal horrible snippets of the surprises to come throughout 2005, and the faint of heart reader is advised to stop reading now. According to Gannon, some time before August Newt Gingrich is slated to be named special envoy to China; there he’s slated to stun an assembled crowd by pissing on the Great Wall. Later on a state visit to Chengdu, the feisty former congressional whip will shock an assembled Chinese press corps by strangling a baby panda with his bare hands.

It only gets worse. In late autumn, newly appointed ambassador to the Vatican Ozzy Osborne will make headlines by biting the head off a live dove and spitting blood into a communion chalice. This will be the shock that sends Pope John Paul the Second to finally give up the ghost, and this fits well into the Neocon’s plans.

Following the Pope’s demise, Dick Cheney will head to Rome with a goon-squad in tow to strong-arm the College of Cardinals into naming Antonin Scalai (elevated the month before to position of Chief Justice after the mysterious bathtub death of Justice Rehnquist) as high pontiff. After a triumphant but violence-marred coronation ceremony, Pope Scalia will announce that he’s be unable to fulfill his chief justice / pontiff role from Europe, providing an excuse to have the entire Vatican moved to America on the aircraft carrier Nimitz. Pope / Chief Justice Scalia will deliver his first Christmas benediction from the new Holy See (now conveniently located on the West Bank of the Potomac) and declares all nations in with legal birth control to be terrorist states, and makes Opus Dei America’s official state religion.

World reaction to this latest affront will come on New Year’s Day, when UN Secretary General Kofi Anan delivers a scathing speech against the Bush administration at UN headquarters in New York; he’ll declare that he speaks for the world when he says that the behavior of the United States is “shocking”, and that “the world has never been quite so mortified as it is now”.

It will be his strongest, but ultimately his last speech, as he along with most of the rest of the UN governing body are killed when UN Headquarters is suddenly demolished to make way for a new Manhattan casino complex, part of a secret deal between Ambassador Bolton and newly-appointed Secretary of the Interior Donald Trump. The world will express outrage, then go out for drinks and forget all about it.

Yahuda BangsMarch 19, 2005
yahuda.bangs@gmail.com

Angry American Abroad #1 was originally published as part of Canned Revolution's Little Red Email of Monday, March 21, 2005. Visit Canned Revolution online & sign up for the Little Red Email at http://www.cannedrevolution.com/.