Fresh Loaf

In a move that threatens to make emptying your spam folder much less amusing, the Nigerian government recently launched a big crackdown on so-called “419″ scammers.

The 419 scam, named for the section of the Nigerian legal code outlawing it, reportedly rakes in billions of dollars annually. It works thusly: You know those weird, obsequious, all-cap business proposal e-mails you delete (e.g. GREETINGS OF THE DAY TO YOU KIND SIR: I AM THE WIDOW OF FORMER ASSISTANT UNDERSECRETARY OF PETROLEUM DEVELOPMENT PETER KUMBAYA-MYLORD-KUMBAYA AND IT IS MY GREAT PLEASURE TO WRITE TO YOU AND PRESENT MY BUSINESS PROPOSAL FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION)? It turns out lots of people actually believe the e-mails are real.

The 419 is an advance-fee scam, meaning “guy promises to send you $800,000 if you send him $1,000 to take care of the paperwork necessary to obtain the money.”

But the 419 will forever be associated with Nigeria because it’s the best-known Nigerian export: corruption.

Continue Reading “Don’t Panic: Is Nigeria finally cleaning up its crooked ways?”

(Photo illustration by Andisheh Nouraee)

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Afghanistan’s 2nd presidential election of the War On Terror™ era is Thursday.

Should you care?

Yes. The U.S. has occupied Afghanistan since 2001.

Out of the goodness of my heart, I wrote two columns on the subject. That’s how strong my love is.

The first is about President Hamid Karzai and the election’s main issues.

The second is about the opposition and features a picture of donkey genitals.

Really, what more could you ask for?

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What does North Korea hope to gain by testing nuclear weapons?

On May 25, North Korea flipped a radioactive bird at President Barack Obama when it exploded a nuclear device in an underground facility in the northeast part of the country.

The test site was not far from the spot where, in 2006, North Korea exploded a similarly frightening gizmo, described at the time by the Bush administration as a “nookyullar” device. North Korea is thought to be the only country on Earth to possess both a nuclear and a nookyullar device.

You may have noticed I’m using the word device rather than weapon to describe these North Korean explosive thingies. That’s because I was just listening to Selig Harrison, former Washington Post Northeast Asia bureau chief and current head of the Center for International Policy’s Asia Program, speaking on my favorite news radio show, KCRW-FM’s “To The Point.” (Yes, that was a shameless attempt to earn a KCRW tote bag.)

Harrison says there’s no evidence to suggest North Korea has the technical know-how to fire a nuclear device at anyone. Exploding a weapon underground in what essentially is a laboratory is very different from miniaturizing a weapon and mounting it atop a missile.

I’m not saying don’t be scared of North Korea. I’m just saying you should know precisely what it is you might be scared of.

(Read the rest, please)

(Photo illustration by Andisheh Nouraee)

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Pakistan is collapsing into civil war, causing world leaders, pundits and assorted chickens, wusses, pussies and scaredy cats to start freaking out.

Why the freakness?

Outside observers are afraid the world is about to confront a nuclear nightmare. They’re afraid Pakistan’s super-violent, fundamentalist Taliban fighters might be able to get their hands on one of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

Is it possible?

Yes. It’s actually happened before.

In 1965, an organized crime group led by a man named Emilio Largo stole a French fighter jet loaded with two nuclear weapons.

Largo and his crew hid the weapons in an underwater cave in the Bahamas. Largo threatened to nuke Miami unless he received a sack of diamonds worth approximately $2 billion in today’s money.

Largo was on the brink of bombing Miami, but was thwarted at the last minute by a heroic British government employee who not only found the nukes, but also killed Largo and stole his mega-hot girlfriend…

Continue reading Don’t Panic

(Photo illustration by Andisheh Nouraee)

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The casual savagery of life in Iraq never fails to shock me.

For example, Reuters reports that Iraq’s government plans to kill all of the country’s bores. They claim it’s part of an effort to fend off an outbreak of H1N1, the so-called swine flu.

I’m not sure if the mass murder of wallflowers, dullards and people who talk about work at dinner parties is going to stop the spread of flu. Even if it does work, it’s still barbaric.

OK, scratch that. I just reread my notes. They’re killing boars.

But still, violence in Iraq is shocking.

Last week, terrorists detonated three car bombs within minutes of each other on a commercial strip in Baghdad’s Sadr City neighborhood. Forty-one people were killed and at least 60 were injured. The bombs went off around 5 p.m., the area’s peak shopping time.

The bombing wasn’t an isolated incident. Violence against civilians in Iraq is once again surging.

Click here to read the rest of Don’t Panic

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After I fix piracy, I will focus my energy on the most vicious terrorists of all: Canadian geese.

How can America stop Somalia’s sea pirates?

If Obama put me in charge of “Operation Hook-hands Into Plowshares,” here’s what I’d do:

1) First, stop referring to Somalia as a “failed state.” Many Somali pirates are teenage boys. We all know how moody and status-hungry teenagers can be. The low self-esteem associated with living in a failed state is clearly causing them to act out. Instead of calling Somalia failed, how about something nicer, like “differently successful”?

Read the rest

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ATTENTION JOB SEEKERS

Don’t be discouraged by the nation’s ballooning unemployment figures. There are plenty of great jobs out there. You just need to start being creative about where you look, and open-minded about what kind of jobs you’re willing to take.

For example, if you’re a physically fit black man who enjoys acting in non-sexual wrestling videos, you can earn a quick $125 simply by visiting Craigslist and answering the ad titled “Black Muscular Males For Nonsexual Wresting Videos.”

Unemployed sugarbabies in the Southeast United States take note: Craigslist also features a help-wanted ad posted by a self-described Miami “sugardaddy” who travels to Georgia for work.

At the moment, he’s looking for an Atlanta sugarbaby with whom he can enjoy dancing, golf, fishing, and jai alai. “Pay is cash for time spent together. Obviously the more time we see each other, the more pay.” Obviously.

For my international reader(s), the recent London Review of Books features a classified ad that reads simply, “Lesbian, 30, wants man’s cock to play with. Also balls.” I’m not sure if it’s for money or if, in this case, the work is its own reward.

Good luck on your job hunt, but be very careful. There are a lot of people out there trying to take advantage in these desperate economic times.

(more…)

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1. 10 films released in 2008 that were worse than Delgo (People love lists — see, you’re reading this one! — especially when they count down the worst of the worst.)

2. Year in review: A look back at the arts in Atlanta for 2008 (The only thing folks love as much as lists: heavy doses of nostalgia.)

3. Atlanta nightlife is DEAD (Um, not really. But the headline sure is catchy.)

4. Don’t Panic: Why is Israel bombing Gaza? (The over-simplified, bloggy answer: Bed-wetting)

5. Atlanta after an asteroid or nuke bomb … thanks, Google! (Is your neighborhood inside the mushroom cloud? Click to find out!)

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Because you can’t be a journalist in late December without writing lists . . .

Five People Who Also Should Have Had Shoes Thrown At Them In 2008

5. Nouri al-Maliki – After Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zeidi threw his shoes at President Bush at a press conference in Iraq this month, Bush tried to spin the incident as a size 10 vindication of the Iraq war. “That’s what happens in free societies,” he said. Credible reports have since surfaced saying Prime Minister of Iraq Nouri al-Maliki’s goons have tortured al-Zeidi and forced him to write an apology.  Free society, indeed. Shoe Maliki now.

4. Colin Powell – A leaked report on the failed Iraq occupation quotes former Secretary of State Colin Powell saying the Pentagon systematically lied about progress in Iraq way back in 2003. Powell knew it then, but he’s only telling us now. Thanks for nothing, Colin. You deserve a pair of combat boots to the head for every U.S. troop who has died in Iraq.

3. Mikheil Saakashvili – In August, the President of Georgia provoked a stupid war with Russia that left tens of thousands of Georgians dead and homeless. He then took $30 million in U.S. reconstruction aid and built a five-star boutique hotel and condo complex. Saakashvili needs a Saak-of-sneakers tossed at him, immediately.

2. Robert Mugabe – Zimbabwe’s dictator would rather see everyone in his country dead than relinquish power. His most recent crime: allowing a cholera outbreak to spread through the country’s water supply. He blames it on a foreign conspiracy, not his failure to maintain Zimbabwe’s water treatment plants. Health experts believes tens of thousands will die as a result of Mugabe’s most recent stupidity. There aren’t enough shoes at the Zappos.com warehouse to throw at his head.

1. Burma’s military junta – When Category 4 Cyclone Nargis devastated Burma in May, the goons who run Burma like their plantation were not only unprepared, but refused to admit foreign relief workers. Approximately 150,000 innocent Burmese lost their lives. The junta needs to buried alive under a Foot Locker store.

Don’t miss the Top Five Best-Named World Leaders of 2008. Everyone who reads it will receive $100 from the Bill Gates E-Mail Tracker Fund.

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For news writers, the year-end list is a subtle signal to readers that their publication has early holiday deadlines and they had to hurry up and turn something in.

For critics, it’s often an exercise in hipper-than-thou opacity.

“Wouldn’t it be sweet if an album took the prickly psych damage of Black Dice but made it work in the context of epic rock, so that it had the cathartic build of early Mogwai?”

That’s an actual sentence from Pitchfork’s “The 50 Best Albums of 2008” list. And for the record, no it wouldn’t be sweet.

I’ve written two year-end lists. Here’s the first.

Top Five Best-Named World Leaders of 2008

5. Condoleeza Rice – Rice is a lousy Secretary of State. I won’t miss her when she’s gone. But I will miss the funny headlines she generates when she travels to Asia for work. Gems like the AP’s November 30 “Bush sends Rice to India in aftermath of attacks” will soon be a thing of the past.

4. Hu Jintao – When I hear Chinese President Hu Jintao’s name, I imagine conversations between President Bush and his Asian policy briefers. “President Hu is on the phone for you, sir.” “President who?” “President Hu. From China, sir.” “Don’t ask me who. You’re the one who’s supposed to remember his name.”

3. Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuck – Crowned King of Bhutan by his father last month, this 28-year-old hunky Himalayan has all the ladies in Bhutan singing “Everybody Wangchuck Tonight.”

2. Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung of Vietnam – Tan Dung? Have you seen a doctor for that, Prime Minister?

1. Al-Wathiqu Billah Tuanku Mizan Zainal Abidin Ibni Al-Marhum Sultan Mahmud Al-Muktafi Billah Shah – That’s a real name. Honest. He is the King (a.k.a. the Yang di-Pertuan Agong) of Malaysia. He’s only 46, so expect to see him at number one on this particular list for decades to come.

That reminds me, I want to give a shout-out to Larry Tesler. Tesler invented the copy-and-paste function for word processors in the 1970s. That last item would not have been possible without him.

Come back tomorrow for my list of people who also deserved to have shoes thrown at them.

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Lashkar-e-Taiba sounds like the name of a perky, South Asian ice-dancing duo. “Taiba’s triple lutz was the crowd pleaser, but it was Lashkar’s flawless camel spin that really wowed the judges.”

But don’t let the cute moniker fool you. Lashkar-e-Taiba is a terrorist group headquartered in Pakistan. It’s a very, very, (very!) dangerous organization.

Audience shouts: “How dangerous is it?

It’s soooo dangerous, when she steps on a talking scale, the scale says “ouch.”

I’m sorry. That’s how fat your mama is.

Lashkar-e-Taiba is soooo dangerous, it very nearly started a nuclear war.

In December 2001, LeT attacked India’s parliament in New Delhi. The assault left 12 dead and 22 injured. Naturally, India was furious. LeT operated freely and openly in Pakistan. India warned Pakistan: if you don’t crack down on LeT, we will.

To show it was serious, India ordered a massive troop build-up along its border with Pakistan. By mid-2002, India had roughly 700,000 troops — and nuclear weapons — ready to hit Pakistan. In response, Pakistan pointed 300,000 troops — and its own nuclear arsenal — at India.

It’s the closest the world has come to nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis. (more…)

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Last week, in a column correctly described as the best newspaper column I wrote last week, I noted that the focus of the War On Terror™ has shifted from the Middle East to South Asia.

Public discussion of this shift tends to dwell on Afghanistan – where American talking-heads are hoping former Surgin’ Gen. David Petraeus will be able to produce a successful sequel to his Iraq success. Call it Surgin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo.

But anyone pinning their hopes on an Iraqi-style surge succeeding in Afghanistan is missing half the story. Afghanistan can’t be improved, and certainly can’t be fixed, without also addressing the serious problems plaguing its neighbor, Pakistan.

Like Danny and Sandy might have said had they been senior fellows at the Council on Foreign Relations instead of senior classmen at fictional Rydell High School: Afghanistan and Pakistan go together, like rama lama lama ke ding a de ding a dong.

(Read mo’)

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Everyone’s aware of the marquis problems Obama’s likely to tackle: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the global financial meltdown, global warming, and the iPhone’s piss-poor battery life and spotty 3G network connection.

But there are a couple others that are just as big, though not as well known. Perhaps Obama can take a look after the puppy is White House-trained.

Read the rest

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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It’s increasingly likely that the United States economy is falling into its deepest recession in a quarter-century.

Unemployment is rising. Retirement funds are dwindling. And one of the only sectors of the housing industry that’s doing well is locksmithing. When banks repossess homes after foreclosure, they have to put new locks on the doors.

Even members of the liberal media elite, such as myself, are starting to feel the pain.

I have downsized from venti to grande lattes. I’ll now drink whatever wine I have in the house, even if it isn’t ideally paired with the meal I’m eating. I may even start charging my new iPhone 3G at the office – just to shave a couple bucks off my home electricity bill each month. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Read the rest

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What’s next for the United States and Pakistan now that Musharraf is gone?

Last month, I took my first vacation from writing this column in seven years.

Before I left, I asked one favor of the cosmos: Don’t let any big-deal, easy-to-snark-about, world-affairs-type thingies happen while I’m away.

While I was gone, not only did Russia invade Georgia (the Stalin one, not the Rhett Butler one), but the United States and Iraq are negotiating major U.S. troop reductions and Pervez “The Perv” Musharraf quit Pakistan’s presidency under threat of impeachment.

Screw you, too, cosmos.

(Read the rest)

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Iran test-fired several ballistic missiles today. The event prompted the following headline from Reuters:

Iran tests missiles, heightening tension with West

When Israel rehearsed air strikes on Iran last month, this was the headline:

Israel appears to rehearse Iran attack: report

The U.S. has two carrier battle groups within striking range of Iran and is currently holding exercise of Iran’s southern coast. Here’s the Reuters headline for that:

U.S. holds navy exercise after Iran comments on Gulf

So, you see, when two nuclear powers, the U.S. and Israel, rehearse preemptive military strikes on Iran, tensions are not heightened.

When Iran test-fires nine missiles, tensions are heightened.

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I don’t usually reprint e-mails I receive. Then again, I don’t usually get letters this funny:

From: “Faran Farani”
To: andisheh@creativeloafing.com
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2008 05:06:30 +0100
Subject: Wish Granted

In one of your recent craps, that you managed to scribble incoherently since you were undoubtedly ‘high’ with cocaine and marijuana at the time, you wrote ‘Pakistan has done everything to us except punching our moms and molesting our dogs’…..

Well, you chronic drug addict, your wish will be granted! Need anything else?

—

The recent crap to which Farani refers is here.

I’m tempted to scrap the column I’m working on and write another one this week about Pakistan.

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Someone asked me today if I was serious in my Don’t Panic column this week about Zimbabwe inaugurating its nationhood with a Bob Marley concert.

I was completely serious. As luck would have it, footage from the concert is on YouTube.

Here’s Bob Marley & The Wailers performing the song “Zimbabwe,” in Zimbabwe, minutes after it became Zimbabwe:

At the 33 second mark, you can see Prince Charles (in a military uniform) and Robert Mugabe at a podium together. Note as well the banner that refers to Zimbabwe’s capital city, Harare, by it’s British colonial name, Salisbury.

It’s an amazing song — anthemic and hopeful, but also politically astute. The song’s final verse actually predicts Zimbabwe’s sad fate:

So soon we’ll find out who is the real revolutionaries
And I don’t want my people to be tricked by mercenaries.

Zimbabwe was indeed tricked by mercenaries and phony revolutionaries.

Rebel leader Robert Mugabe and his cronies promised Zimbabwe’s people independence.

It gave them misery.

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I will be on the Rick Outzen show on News Radio 1620 in Pensacola, Florida today to discuss a recent Don’t Panic column I wrote about Colombia.

I’m going on at 1:35 p.m., Pensacola time (2:35 p.m., Atlanta time).

If you don’t live in Pensacola, but would like to hear how little I actually know about Colombia, the show is simulcast online.

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The man who said that war with Iran “will not happen on my watch” is apparently no longer watching.

Admiral William Fallon, the U.S. military’s top commander of military forces in the Middle East, resigned.

In retrospect, the last sentence of this column may have been wishful thinking.

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From the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON (AP) — In what U.S. officials called a serious provocation, Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats harassed and provoked three U.S. Navy ships in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, threatening to explode the American vessels.

Apparently, Iranian military boats playing chicken with three U.S. Navy ships off Iran’s coast constitutes serious provocation.

Twice in 2007, U.S. carrier battle groups practiced maneuvers near Iran’s coast while American political leaders hinted at impending air strikes and/or invasion.

Apparently, that was not a serious provocation.

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From the Christian Science Monitor:

Israeli military finds cluster bomb use in Lebanon war was legal

Ladies and gentlemen, after impartially investigating myself, I have concluded I have done nothing wrong.

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Michael Currie Schaffer on the United States’ ugly new passports:

Apparently, someone forgot that passports are mainly meant to be read by, you know, foreigners. Plastered like a NASCAR vehicle with cheeseball patriotic clip-art that might have been swiped from the Colbert Report’s opening credits, the new books spill jingoism the way traveling Americans once spilled hard currency.

Clip-art patriotism and tchotchke patriotism aren’t just tacky. They’re phony.

Patriotism is about the way you live your life, not the objects you affix to your suit jacket. Do you do things that help your country and countrymen? Then you’re a patriot, even if you dance to the “Internationale” in Che Guevara boxer shorts.

If I sound grumpy, it’s because I am. Too many flag-in-lapel-types support the atrocities I describe in my column this week for me to feel glib about “cheeseball patriotic clip-art.”

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Reuters headline from 1:03 p.m. today: “Sept report on Iraq will tell it straight: Petraeus”

Translation: “Previous Iraq War reports full of shit: Petraeus”

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The White House and its allies have been claiming that the so-called surge is reducing violence in Baghdad.

Apparently, that’s a load of crap.

According to a McClatchy Newspapers report published yesterday, the touted drop in violence is just a White House accounting trick:

Car bombs and other explosive devices have killed thousands of Iraqis in the last three years, but the administration doesn’t include them in the casualty counts it has been citing as evidence that the surge of additional U.S. forces is defusing tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

Other than the bombings, the violence is down!

Nifty!

James Denselow of the U.K. think tank Chatham House sums it up thusly:

Since the administration keeps saying that failure is not an option, they are redefining success in a way that suits them.

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