Could you survive a year without shopping? Excluding, of course, essentials like food and the like. But no clothes. No books or CDs. No fancy restaurants or ready meals. No weekend breaks. No redundant consumerism. Pure hell - or liberation?

The idea occurs to me, as so many desperate solutions do, during the Christmas holiday season.

I have maxed out the Visa, moved on to the Citibank debit card, and am tapping the ATM like an Iraqi guerrilla pulling crude from the pipeline.

Convinced I am picking up no more than the occasional trinket - a tree ornament for Howard and Nanette here, a bar of French soap there - atheist Grinch that I am, I've still managed to scatter $1,001 across New York City and the internet in just two weeks.

In New York, only a day after the towers fell, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani counselled his trembling constituents to "show you're not afraid. Go to restaurants. Go shopping."

When the world's people asked how they could help, he responded, "Come here and spend money." Shopping became a patriotic duty. Buy that flat-screen TV, our leaders commanded, or the terrorists will have won.   more »

Bush may be in contention for "worst president" in the post-World War II era. Although he still has two and a half years and could conceivably orchestrate a late inning rally, the way he has run his administration to date makes that doubtful.

Although he still has two and a half years to go in his term and could conceivably orchestrate a late inning rally, the way he has run his administration to date makes that doubtful.

But Bush does have some stiff competition from other post-war administrations that failed—those of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon.

Because of his charisma and because he died before his time, John F. Kennedy is still a pop icon more than forty years after his death. But most historians believe that the public overrates his presidency.   more »

Rape. The latest of American atrocities. Though it's not really the latest- it's just the one that's being publicized the most. The poor girl Abeer was neither the first to be raped by American troops, nor will she be the last.

The only reason this rape was brought to light and publicized is that her whole immediate family were killed along with her. Rape is a taboo subject in Iraq. Families don't report rapes here, they avenge them.

We've been hearing whisperings about rapes in American-controlled prisons and during sieges of towns like Haditha and Samarra for the last three years.

The naiveté of Americans who can't believe their 'heroes' are committing such atrocities is ridiculous. Who ever heard of an occupying army committing rape??? You raped the country, why not the people?

In the news they're estimating her age to be around 24, but Iraqis from the area say she was only 14. Fourteen. Imagine your 14-year-old sister or your 14-year-old daughter. Imagine her being gang-raped by a group of psychopaths and then the girl was killed and her body burned to cover up the rape.

Finally, her parents and her five-year-old sister were also killed. Hail the American heroes... Raise your heads high supporters of the 'liberation' - your troops have made you proud today.   more »

Osama Bin Laden is ill and invisible, but five years after September 11, 2001, his al-Qaeda movement has become the fulcrum of a global, Islamic resistance against the United States.

Asia Times Online has learned from an operative close to the al-Qaeda leadership that bin Laden languishes on a dialysis machine, in rapidly declining health.

"Sheikh [Osama] was in a poor condition when my father last visited," said the operative, who uses the name "Abdullah". Abdullah's father, known as Sheikh Ibrahim, is number two after Tahir Yuldeshev in the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IUM), a group closely allied with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and operating in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan.

Sheikh Ibrahim's meeting with bin Laden took place "a few weeks ago", Abdullah told Asia Times Online in an interview at the end of June in a northern Pakistani city.

Abdullah had traveled there from North Waziristan, a Pakistani tribal agency on the Afghanistan border, to meet this correspondent.   more »

Britain invaded an Arab country led by a man the prime minister branded a dictator on a par with Hitler, who supported "terrorists" and was said to threaten vital western interests in the region. The invasion was based on a falsehood.

That was 50 years ago. Yet Anthony Eden's response to Nasser's decision to nationalise the Suez canal has remarkable parallels with those of his successor, Tony Blair, in another Middle East crisis of the west's own making.

Eden, who had been foreign secretary in the second world war, compared Nasser to Hitler (as did the Labour leader, Hugh Gaitskell). The situation was "the most hazardous that our country has known since 1940", Eden warned Eisenhower. Blair similarly evoked ghosts of the past. He could not endure the "shame" of appeasement, he said a few days before the Iraq invasion. Britain would face a "living nightmare" if it appeased Saddam Hussein.

Blair, like Eden, had succumbed to that most dangerous affliction of political leaders - misreading history. Nasser was an Arab nationalist. Saddam was a dictator, but no Hitler.   more »

On TV, the video of French star Zinedine Zidane head-butting Italian defender Marco Materazzi in the chest has become the sports version of Howard Dean's scream, endlessly replayed. And like the Dean Scream, the Zidane Butt is all over the Web.

I loved seeing how the New York Times website linked to a clip of it on YouTube -- one more bit of evidence that we're not in Media Kansas anymore.

Of course, the Times being the Times, they linked to the video featuring the moment as covered by French TV: "Mais pourquoi? Mais pourquoi? Mais pourquoi?" -- "But why? But why? But why?" -- the announcer plaintively repeats). And the Zidane mashups have begun in earnest.

Watching the game, it was immediately clear that the head-butt was going to be big. "Did you see the Italian guy pinched Zidane's nipple?" one of my very observant friends pointed out as soon as it happened.   more »

11 JULY

Porn or Art? The Tate's Two Hours of Non-Stop Sex

Western Imperialism: from Colonial to Democratic Fascism

Rush Limbaugh: Voice of America [That's How Fucked Up We Are]

"Terrorism": The Only Weapon the Oppressed Have

Good Cops/Bad Cops: Democrats/Republicans & The Authoritarian State

Arabophobia: Dead Iraqis and America's Callousness

Iraq: What Does It Take to End the Disaster?