Category Archives: Humor and Satire

CIA, C.O.D., LOL


Afghan President Karzai explaining how large a bag he wants his CIA cash delivered in

Following the “revelation” that the CIA has been dropping off bags of cash to Afghan’s President Karzai, perhaps its acronym should also stand for Covert Insurance Allowance. What better way to spread democracy and freedom-loving among the Afghan people than to buy allegiance with greenbacks. After all, if Karzai is not supplied with freshly minted American dollars, how can he get the warlords to side with him. Let’s face it, the Taliban have stockpiled the opium, so Karzai needs some source of income for his fragile economy. As bribed supporters of American liberation, we can be assured that these warlords would never use any of that under-the-table funding to buy opium from the Taliban.

Many Americans are shocked that the CIA would provide clandestine aid to a foreign president who is pulled out on the kilim in public to be chided over Afghan’s notorious corruption. But rest assured that President Karzai gives America receipts for every dollar. These receipts are actually recycled and used as toilet paper back in CIA headquarters, resulting in a significant savings for the agency. The CIA can now cover its own shit without having to buy truckloads of Scots Tissues, much to the consternation of the Koch Brothers. Now that the shit has hit the fan, so to speak, more money will need to be provided to Karzai so that more receipts can make their way back to headquarters. There is plenty of cash available, despite sequestration, since so many of the other dictators that were getting genuine made-in-America bribes on the sly are gone. Continue reading CIA, C.O.D., LOL

Too handsome for Saudi Women


Omar Borkan Al Gala

The news from the Middle East and broader Islamic World is as dismal today as it was yesterday. Syria continues to be a spiraling bloodbath, as does Iraq as we near the 10th anniversary on May 1 of the notorious Bush the Younger declaration of “Mission Accomplished.” Several hundred garment workers may have lost their lives in the collapse of an 8-story sweat shop in Bangladesh and the list goes on. There are times when those of us on the comfortable outside looking in need to take a breath and find something to laugh about in the onslaught of absurdity. The fact that yesterday I heard a lecture on Waiting for Godot is not entirely irrelevant for posting this blog.

For the Saudi purity police it seems that it is possible for a visitor to be so media-savvy handsome that local women need to be protected by deporting him. The case in reporting-stupidity point is about a certain Omar Borkan Al Gala, a fashion photographer, actor and poet from Dubai. England’s authoritatively silly tabloid The Sun carries the following subline: “THE internet is awash with speculation that one of the men deported from Saudi Arabia for being “too handsome” is a fashion photographer from Dubai.” For a pretend news source that Murdoch-murders the truth every chance it can get, there seems to be a voyeuristic fascination with Arab men’s bodies, including Saddam in his undies.

So is this guy really so handsome that he is a whipped-up man of mass distraction to the Saudi regime? Continue reading Too handsome for Saudi Women

Tabsir Redux: This is not an Easter Egg

Christians around the world celebrate Easter with thoughts of the empty tomb and resurrection of Christ. But there is more. Weather permitting, children are let loose in their Sunday best to hunt for Easter eggs, adding a secular, healthy, dietary blessing to the baskets of chocolate bunnies and jelly beans waiting at home. Even the White House lawn is set for the annual Easter Egg Roll (minus the Christian Rock) on Monday. It is as though many Christians are not content to leave the tomb empty. Apparently egged on by the spring fever of long forgotten fertility rites, the main message of Christianity gets sidetracked to a debate of anything but intellectual designing: which comes first, the Easter egg or the Easter bunny?

Eggs are not the exclusive mystical domain of Christendom (although the ludicrous lengths taken to parade a sacred holiday into outrageous bonnets and Texas-shaped eggs suggest we have entered the dispensation of Christendumb). Secular folk and agnostics eat their eggs for breakfast with bacon, toast and diner coffee. But all God’s children like eggs, including Muslims with internet savy and a taste for the miraculous. Take a gander (but do not confuse his spouse’s eggs with those shown here) at the three eggs shown below. What do you see different in the middle egg than the ones on either side (hint: the left is from the White House State of the Union Eggroll and the right is reported from last year’s Easter Sunday):

Continue reading Tabsir Redux: This is not an Easter Egg

Tabsir Redux: Headless in Saudi Arabia

[”Traffic sign in Saudi Arabia. The man-without-a-head symbol indicates a pedestrian sidewalk.”]

I recently came across a rather plebian junior high school level text on The Middle East: History, Culture, People (by Thomas G. Kavunedos and Harold E. Hammond, Bronxville, New York, Cambridge Book Company, Inc, 1968). The book is quite forgetable, but some of the illustrations bring you to a full stop. My favorite is the illustration above. If indeed this was once the sign for a crosswalk, no wonder everyone seems to drive Mercedes in the kingdom.

Daniel Martin Varisco

[Tabsir Redux is a reposting of earlier posts on the blog, since memories are fickle and some things deserve a second viewing. This post was originally made on October 10, 2006.]

Marking (by Twain) the new year once again

The more things change, the more they remain the same. Mark Twain did not say that, but consider his greeting from the 19th to the 20th century, published in the New York Herald on December 30, 1900:

I bring you the stately nation named Christendom, returning, bedraggled, besmirched, and dishonored, from pirate raids in Kiao-Chou, Manchuria, South Africa, and the Philippines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of hypocrisies. Give her soap and towel, but hide the looking glass.

I wonder what Twain would say about American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, drones over Pakistan and Yemen and old ladies taking off their shoes to board an airplane…