Call it the Infamy Emporium. No road map needed. You’ll find it with a just well-chosen keyword and a click. On the vast pages of eBay, badness is bubbling up all over.

There, amid the clutter of Michael Vick “dogfighter” license plates, Lindsay Lohan “I don’t want to go to Rehab” T-shirts and Chris Benoit action figures, a morbid niche market is eternally fueled by the latest scandals and villains.

Need an Osama Bin Laden whiskey flask? It’s yours for just $11.99. Craving a car once owned by NFL troublemaker Pacman Jones? Sorry, that 2005 Chrysler Crossfire just got snapped up for about $20,000.

Feeding off the fumes of a white-hot celebrity culture, built on the crumbs of America’s intense appetite for gossip, this strange segment of eBay is surging like never before. It’s a bazaar of the bizarre, driven by sellers’ lust for a quick buck and buyers’ hopes for some notoriety of their own.   more »

Neoliberalism claims that we are best served by maximum market freedom and minimum intervention by the state.

The role of government should be confined to creating and defending markets, protecting private property and defending the realm.

All other functions are better discharged by private enterprise, which will be prompted by the profit motive to supply essential services.

By this means, enterprise is liberated, rational decisions are made and citizens are freed from the dehumanising hand of the state.

This, at any rate, is the theory. But as David Harvey proposes in his book A Brief History of Neoliberalism, wherever the neoliberal programme has been implemented, it has caused a massive shift of wealth not just to the top 1%, but to the top tenth of the top 1%.   more »

Missing from all this media and political arrogance is one simple, but vital question: who designated the United States global judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to determining other countries' political decisions?

The answer to this question is simple if one bothers to look and world opinion: no one.

Paternalistic and racist conceptions that Americans know what is best for the beleaguered and downtrodden of the world are nothing new.

Such notions are merely the most recent update of the longstanding "White Man's Burden," in which Western leaders nobly endure the costs of civilizing the rest of the world – not for self-aggrandizement, but for the benefit of the least advantaged.   more »

As it bleeds into its fifth year, the Iraq war is excelling only in savagery and surrealism.

We now have an American President publicly citing the similarities to Vietnam as a reason why the US must not withdraw – and he is merrily quoting Graham Greene's anti-war masterpiece The Quiet American in his defence.

Far from thinking anything has gone wrong, he declares: "The Iraqi people owe the American people a great debt of gratitude. That's the problem here in America. They wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that's significant enough in Iraq."

Meanwhile, the Iraqi psyche is so wrecked by the 7/7 blasting on to their streets 24/7 that my Iraqi friends report mass hysteria gnawing into the survivors.   more »

Bush's nickname for Gonzales was Fredo,

who was the hapless Corleone brother in "The Godfather"

Always in trouble and, more importantly,

getting Michael in trouble. Screwing things up

Trying too hard, and finally getting

iced by his own brother

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Keywords: whitehouse, resignation, gonzales, bush