Bhutto has been dead only a couple of days, and already the demagogic politicians and would-be presidents are 
spinning damage control for ex-general and president-for-as-long-as-he-likes Pervez Musharraf. Having invested so bullishly in this coup leader, Bush and company are reluctant to see his fortunes fall alongside the corpse of his chief political rival. In Pakistan as elsewhere, we build today’s disastrous policies on those of yesteryear, compounding tragedy with farce and playing with whole nations as if they were mere instruments of our global ambitions. For decades we’ve supported strongman military leaders in Pakistan because it served our purposes to do so (one-stop political shopping, in effect – less haggling with popular leaders). The rationale in the 1970s and 80s was the fight against the U.S.S.R. in Afghanistan, an effort that amounted to a kind of Ford Foundation for jihadist groups, funded in part by the Saudis and facilitated by the CIA and Pakistan’s I.S.I. intelligence service.
There’s little doubt that elements in Pakistani intelligence and the military are tight with the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Aside from affinities attributable to Pashtun heritage, these are bonds forged over decades of working in tandem with one another. That’s why, in part, sorting who is responsible for a major assassination of this type is bound to be a murky affair. Our own leaders are insisting that this is the work of terrorists, al Qaeda, etc., and that Musharraf and his crew are the forces of light against this profound darkness. But where do the terrorists end and the security forces begin, exactly? We’ve been pouring money into this apparatus for a generation, first in support of Islamic extremists (v. the Soviets) and later in opposition to them (or, at least, some segment of them that does not include extremists like Dostum in Afghanistan). Should we be surprised when the whole thing blows up in our faces?
For our great leaders, the issue doesn’t even arise. We are directed to keep our gaze on the surface – just accept the most simplistic explanation… mindless violence by nihilistic fanatics who hate us for our freedom, our love of democracy, and our chewy goodness. That may work for domestic consumption, since the crime is so heinous, but it seems unlikely that the Pakistani people would accept this explanation. Political assassination is nothing new in Pakistan – Bhutto herself has been accused of employing this tactic in the past. Whatever her shortcomings, she was admired by a substantial number of people, many of whom see Musharraf as the party responsible for her killing. Our government has seen Bhutto only as a means of propping up Musharraf, who counts Cheney among his strongest advocates in the U.S. We are very closely associated with the President/General, and if he is seen as the despoiler of Pakistani’s hopes for a more open society, they may start hating us even more than they do already.
Today the exact circumstances of Bhutto’s death are in dispute – the government has one story and PPP witnesses have another. Sounds like another big foreign policy success on the way. Stay tuned.
luv u,
jp
What’s that, tubey? Losing pressure? Damn shame, that. And the gravity control is malfunctioning? Criminy. Oh, heck… there goes our navigation console. Reduced to molten lead. Sometimes things just don’t go right in deep space.
accountable, right? Well, that would be fine, except that he’s not on board. Remember, now… he’s a creature from the planet Zenon as well as our perennial sit-in guitarist, and his ancestors spawned in an environment quite different from that of our humble home planet (Earth, for those who don’t know). He zips from solar system to solar system, galaxy to galaxy, like a mall brat on those flashing roller-sneakers (except not as noisy… and no cell phone). Once we stoked him into an inebriated state with multiple servings of flapjacks, he effected his faulty repairs and promptly flitted off into the ethers, perhaps taking in an intergalactic concert promoted by his Svengali brother, blFmondZagnitz, the Don Kirshner of the Small Magellanic Cloud. (If such a thing can be imagined…)
talents of all those within earshot. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was dispatched to mend the hull, in as much as he doesn’t require oxygen (though he prefers an oxygen-rich environment… question of personal taste, really…). We asked Big Zamboola to arise from his slumber and lend us a little spare gravity. (In as much as he is a planet unto himself, he does have a little of that mysterious force to spare.) Lincoln – still insufferably pleased with himself over his appearance on a late-night sixties talk show – was disinclined to lend a hand, but his evil doppelganger (anti-Lincoln) – still pissed off over Lincoln’s appearance on a … well, you know – set himself to reconstructing our navigation panel using whatever was leftover from last night’s dinner (which was, itself, leftovers).
right?) More than anybody anywhere in this vast country, your now have the ability to call the major party candidates on just about any topic, whether it’s torture of detainees, the war in Iraq, health care, whatever. What’s more, you have the opportunity to make a greater political impact than that of much larger populations in New York, California, and other major states. How so? Well, for one thing, you can choose from among nearly the entire field of candidates – by the time the race gets to New York, for instance, it will essentially be over. Sure, there may not be a lot of variety there, but it’s better than a ballot of one. And you – particularly those folks in Iowa – can stand in a not-too-crowded living room with one of these fuckers, challenge them with non pre-fabricated questions, and go mano-a-mano politically with ordinarily very isolated and well protected politicians.
withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq, b) abandon any plans for permanent bases in that country, and c) pay reparations for the crime we’ve committed against the Iraqi nation at a level of expenditure that at least approaches the amount it took to destroy that nation?
Back it up a bit. Bit more. Bit more. Good, good, that’s it. Now make it smaller… much smaller. No, not that way. I mean by material transmogrification. No, I did not make that up. Just ‘cuz you don’t know how…
eyes (or rather, protuberances that might be mistaken for eyes) flaring like torches, his voice a deafening lash of white sound, his pseudopods pounding the tarmac until it splintered like early winter’s ice on a marsh pond. Then something unusual happened (truth is, that’s what sFshzenKlyrn always does when he gets good grub – irks the shit out of the neighbors back home). Our Zenite friend floated off towards the remains of our space craft and began making himself useful. Quite unusual. Of course, he had to displace Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who had been mounting a quixotic effort to repair the ship by himself. (Trouble is, Marvin doesn’t have super powers. I should leave him outdoors in lighting storms more often. What doesn’t kill you gives you super powers.)
through the ceiling bulkhead of the spacecraft, having ballooned to forty times his normal size. Still working though. Oh sure, he wrecked our ship again, but you gotta’ admit – he’s a professional. (And as you know, professionals come in all shapes and sizes.)
like. In a way, it reminds me of that classic board game, Clue, where there are three groups of cards – suspects, weapons, and locations – and at the start of the game one card from each group is taken out and secreted away; ultimately the winner is the first one to surmise which cards they are. Colonel Mustard did it in the Parlor with the Candlestick Holder, right? Well, particularly on the Republican side, you’ve got maybe three issues that all the major candidates demagogue about, based on G.O.P. polling data – say, immigration, detainee abuse, and the broader “war on terror”. So Rudy, Mitt, Fred, and Huck range about trying to guess what the winning positions will be. (Hmmm…. the Undocumented Mexican Gardener did it in the Anbar Awakening Council with Stress Positions.) They try to outdo each other to the point where it gets pretty ugly. Thus are major national policies born. 
Mitt’s crib on this topic comes from Cofer Black, former C.I.A. official and head of counter terrorism at the Agency (for 3 years, not 30, as 
Circle Game? Done it. Keep the Ball Rollin’? God, yes. Lodi? Oh, Lord… yes. Fucking hell… Wait, I’ve got it. “Six drops of essence of terror. Five drops of sinister sauce!” No? Come on – it’s from 1964, damn it!
the first few days, worked through the bubble-gum cheese, and are truly into the dregs at this point. (As you can see, we’re starting to pull out the T.V. cartoon theme songs.)
than a mere compulsion. Some of you may remember what happened the last time he went on a major binge. If so, I need not remind you… but from the very earliest days of our association with the man from Zenon, the dreaded half-stack of buckwheat flappers has been like a gun to his oddly misshapen head. The first time we witnessed a sFshzenKlyrn bender, the space critter grew to the size of a fifty story building. That was after a rather large serving, I will admit – with the right kind of controls, we may be able to induce a pavlovian response out of him… perhaps induce him to use his enormous talents to get us off this musically-challenged cinder. And perhaps be incinerated in the process. Hmmm…
(or “nuke-you-ler” in Dubya speak) threat posed by Iran, but he certainly succeeded in doing so. Iran “will be dangerous, if they have the knowledge to build a nuclear weapon,” he opined, giving a shrug of clueless arrogance that so eloquently expresses the inner workings of his tiny mind. Facts don’t matter – this much we know. And the facts have been problematic for our president and vice-president as they have tried to nudge the American people ever closer to the brink of another optional war. But they were just as problematic with respect to Iraq, remember – the administration had nothing and was working overtime to provoke some kind of confrontation, without success (to their quite visible frustration).
So what’s next? We know the WMD gambit doesn’t work so well anymore. And the Iranian infiltrators toting E.F.P.’s story doesn’t seem to be getting sufficient traction, perhaps because only a handful of the “foreign” (i.e. non-U.S.) fighters captured in Iraq have proven to be Iranians. (Many more Saudis in that group, actually. Why doesn’t Bush want to invade Saudi Arabia? Friends there… many friends.) That leaves only the ever-useful fallback argument that we’re saving the Iranian people from their tyrannical government. The “liberation” of Iran – has a familiar ring, doesn’t it? Of course, that’s the kind of rationale you don’t hear much about until after the invasion… an appeal designed to make you feel guilty about saying you’re against dropping bombs on people. We’re bombing them to freedom! Trust me, when the Iraq war started, I was handed lame apologetics by otherwise reasonable people, and their rhetoric wasn’t much more rational than that. That was before full-blown ethnic cleansing occurred in Iraq, with more than 2 million exiles living in Syria and Jordan, 2 million more internally displaced, and the Iraqi government (and U.S. military commanders) reluctant to bring them back for fear that it may begin again. So, no… that dog probably won’t hunt, as the saying goes.
Couple in the next room, bound to win a prize. They’ve been going at it all night long. No, seriously – they’re playing some kind of video game in there, and I think they may just be on the verge of winning a trophy. Believe it.
Did you forget to file my column? Damn your eyes! File this week’s column twice, my good man, and be quick about it. Sheesh – hard to get good robot help up here (even if you import it). Where was I? Oh, yeah. Help. We’re stranded on this odd suburban planet, obsessed with yesteryear (or is it yester-light-year?), and what the hell, we’ve just got to earn our keep. Now before you ask, we did try to send Marvin, the man-sized tuber, and both Lincolns out to find day jobs. No luck. What about sFshzenKlyrn? Well…. he’s kind of casual, relying as he does principally on an internal fusion reactor like most celestial bodies of his class. (Not particularly class-conscious as a rule, our extraterrestrial friend does enjoy certain existential advantages over us mere mammals.) So we’re left to our own devices, as it were. I mean, what would you do? Huh?
Learn some sixties numbers. What the hell, we’ve all had to play them at some point. Why not play them for extraterrestrials?
east makes it doubly ludicrous. Dubya wants peace in the middle east? How simple is that? Just stop bombing the place, there’s a good chap. If peace is so bloody important to the bugger, why doesn’t he pull the troops out of Iraq and leave Iran the fuck alone? Simple answer – George Bush doesn’t care about black people, or brown people, or pretty much anybody outside of his circle of millionaire cronies. So, why hold a mid east peace conference now? Well, I’m inclined to agree with Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery (
The demographic impact of this ongoing process has been devastating. A recent issue of 
Hmmm. Looks like a good place to pound some stakes into the ground. No, sFshzenKlyrn, not that kind of steak. The pointy kind, typically made of wood. Wood. A hard, fibrous material that comes from large plants, like… like… Hey! Put the man-sized tuber down!!
from reconstituted playground equipment) started wobbling a bit, listing from side to side, etc. We asked Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to take over the helm while we repaired to the wardroom for afternoon refreshments… and Marvin, being a bit overwhelmed by such complex navigational controls, inadvertently brought us down on the third planet. Yes, the third planet…. the one we were warned specifically not to visit. (Actually, I just made that last bit up, so that the rest of this would make sense. It was really a whole lot more random and senseless than all that.) We slammed into the planet’s rather unforgiving surface (that much is true), our engine room bursting into flame (bogus), triggering secondary explosions that threw us in all directions (exaggeration – actually, the toaster oven in the wardroom started smoking – some bagel crumbs, I believe – and we all ran out of there).
Home Depot and a Wal*Mart. And yes, the trade union leaders are all in jail. If there’s anything remarkably different about this world (as compared to our own home planet), I would have to say that it is that gravity thing. There is, in fact, gravity here on Cancri 55.3, but it’s not your normal keep-you-down kind of mysterious force. Sometimes it lets you up about ten feet, leaves you there, moves you a bit to the right, etc. Very capricious. I can tell you, I find it quite unnerving… and Marvin is about ready to pack up his banjo and leave. (He sailed up into the troposphere for maybe a half-hour then landed in the Staples parking lot, where someone mistook him for a stamp vending machine. When he didn’t spit out customized postage stamps, the disgruntled patron poured hot coffee into him.) Seems like Marvin always gets the shit end of the stick on these tours. That’s why we love him.