"neoconcubine."

--Term used by Salon to describe World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz's companion and native informant on the Middle East, Shaha Riza; cited in Linton Weeks and Richard Leiby, "In the Shadow of a Scandal: Shaha Riza Remains the Mystery Woman From the World Bank" (Washington Post, May 10)
LINK

"neostalgia"

--Nostalgia for the future, according to Simon Reynolds "Back to the Future" (Salon, May 12)
LINK

the richest country in the world, but there are many millions - tens of millions - who are not sharing in that prosperity.

According to the most recent government figures, 37 million Americans are living below the official poverty threshold, which is $19,971 a year for a family of four. That's one out of every eight Americans, and many of them are children.

More than 90 million Americans, close to a third of the entire population, are struggling to make ends meet on incomes that are less than twice the official poverty line. In my book, they're poor.

We don't see poor people on television or in the advertising that surrounds us like a second atmosphere. We don't pay much attention to the millions of men and women who are changing bedpans, or flipping burgers for the minimum wage, or vacuuming the halls of office buildings at all hours of the night. But they're there, working hard and getting very little in return.

The number of poor people in America has increased by five million over the past six years, and the gap between rich and poor has grown to historic proportions. The richest one percent of Americans got nearly 20 percent of the nation's income in 2005, while the poorest 20 percent could collectively garner only a measly 3.4 percent.

The pet food issues of the past weeks have brought new scrutiny to the fact that the FDA inspects about 1% of imported food.

Phenobarbitol has what role in pet food?  Is Dr. Feelgood traipsing the globe like some ChemLab Johnny Appleseed?  Are mysterious food additives
the result of careless manufacture?  Are the interactive substances merely the result of chance, or is there some design here?

Behaviors can be influenced chemically, as we all know.  Is it possible food manufacturers have found the formula for bringing us back to the trough too many times with overflowing plates containing their Brand?  The pursuit of the Almighty Dollar has inspired many corporations to push the envelope on self-justification?

Out of fear of fellow-jailbirds*

Paris takes karate lessons

The jail sentence cannot be avoided.  And Paris Hilton's (26) knees are shivering....

On June 5 the hotel heiress will be required to begin 45 days in jail because of driving without a license.  She'll be happy to survive it!  There have been murder threats posted to her homepage - the little blonde is shocked (Bild reported on this) !

Photo Caption:  Paris Hilton must serve her sentence sitting in such a cell.

The Partygirl is crying bitter tears - but now she's going on the offensive:  Paris is taking karate lessons for jail!

The English (paper) "Sun" reported that Paris wants to be able to defend herself in an emergency against violent attacks from her fellow prisoners.

A personal trainer is working to bring this millionaire, flashy blond into shape.  

A friend of Paris told the Sun:  She is so worried about the jail, that she wants to do everything she can to be able to defend herself.  People say there are a lot of hard women in there who will be looking for her.

Well, this all smacks to me of a PR campaign.  (Duuuuh!) I'd think that trying to defend oneself with karate is not a good idea, especially when karate is a discipline and this one has neither the discipline to conform her behavior to the requirements of the law, nor to graduate high school.  I think she loses any fight, so she gets special custody.  She's been raking down major bucks in the German-speaking world - ad work and such - and this will just up her positives there....

Me, I'm in it for the schadenfreude.

A 17-year-old girl called Doaa Aswad Dekhil from the town of Bashika in the northern province of Nineveh ... returned home after she had converted to Islam in order to marry a Sunni Muslim who was also a Kurd. She had been told by a Sunni Muslim cleric that her family had forgiven her for her elopement and conversion. Instead she was met in Bashika by a large mob of 2,000 people led by members of her family.

from another report:

[S]he had engaged in a relationship with a Sunni Muslim boy and had been absent from her home for one night. Some reports suggested that she had converted to Islam. ...
[H]er killers stormed the house, took her outside and stoned her to death. Her death by stoning, which lasted for some 30 minutes, was recorded on [numerous cell phone videos] widely distributed and [some are] available on the internet.

From Counterpunch:

[Videos show] a dark-haired girl dressed in a red track suit top and black underwear with blood streaming from her face. As she tries to rise to her feet she is kicked and hit on the head with a concrete block. ... Many in the crowd hold up their phone cameras to record the scene. Nobody tries to help her as she is battered to death.

Videos of this "honor killing" were not hard to find. And they confirmed my suspicions: The crowd was sexually charged, like a group of men who would hoot-and-holler at a strip club. Someone stripped off her skirt. Her panties were pulled down part-ways. This is clearly a perverted sexual release for life-long pent-up sexual frustration, from a culture of extreme sexual repression.

At one point, someone shows kindness and offers her the skirt back, for a modicum of modesty. She attemps to cover herself and tries to conceal her shame.

In "Secret Files of The Inquisition", on PBS, we learn that Inquisitions became a fad and spread. Sex is an underlying theme. "Heresy" is a one-size-fits-all transgression which virtually covers everything.

In Milos Forman's "Goya's Ghosts" (2006), we are witness to a very naked Natalie Portman being tortured for sadistic pleasure in a period film during the Spanish Inquisition.

In the movie, "The Dandelion Crown" (1993), a couple of kids fall in love, but are discovered. The townspeople march them up to the top of the hill, and with guidance by the church, they are both tied to stakes and stripped naked. They are whipped. Brush piled at their feet, is set to be lit, but another girl steps forward and begs the townspeople for mercy for the lovers. The people remain ardent. The girl who has tried to intercede, is herself grabbed, tied to a stake, and her dress is removed. A show is made of pulling her panties down and off. She is whipped. The film implies they are all three then burned.

Closer to home, stories of our own witch trials, recount girls being stripped naked and their bare bodies being closely examined in minute detail for "marks-of-the-Devil", such as moles, blemishes or birthmarks, etc.

From Counterpunch, "The Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism":

The eroticization of thanatos necessarily has a flip side: the demonization of eros. The libidinal economy on which fundamentalism rests is as simple as it is devastating. Eros must be turned into evil, sin, pollution. So that all of one's desire can go into thanatos. Or vice-versa. Once destructiveness has been eroticized all one's energies become fixated on the erotic since it poses the greatest threat to the resentment one feels toward life in general. ... The only way to triumph over eros is by eroticizing death. And the only way to secure that eroticization is by projecting guilt, sin, resentment and punishment into every aspect of human sexuality. ...

Life must be filled up with inhibitions and prohibitions in order to assure that sexuality will always be experienced as a fall into sin. Internally that experience is guaranteed by the condition that lays in wait to assault the transgressive psyche, even when the transgression is only in thought or fantasy. ...

Sexuality has been transformed into the festering wound out of which resentment is born. For every time desire rises up one experiences again one's powerlessness to break the strangle-hold the super-ego has over one's sexuality. A jaundiced eye then casts its gaze on all who have succeeded where one failed. ... Envy begets hatred begets rage. The only way to relieve that rage is by projecting it onto the world.

As case in point, witness Paris Hilton. A recent opinion found amongst comments about the Muslim teenager who was stoned to death:

"This is an Honor-Killing? Girls that disrespect and has caused shame to the family are allowed to be stoned to Death? Hear that sh!t, Paris? Christ, the wealthiest slut in the world would have dead years ago!"

Consider the death threats said to be left on her web site, or the "Paris Hilton Autopsy" sculpture, by Daniel Edwards, displayed at Capla Kesting Fine Art gallery Wednesday, May 9, 2007 in New York. As a public figure, Paris Hilton has become a lightening rod for mass hate and schadenfreude. At this point, little claim can be made for the terror heaped upon her, as being "justice".

As wildfires, floods and tornadoes batter the nation, the readiness of the National Guard to deal with those disasters, as well as potential terrorist assaults, is so depleted by deployments to foreign wars and equipment shortfalls that Congress is considering moves to curtail the president's powers over the Guard and require the Defense Department to analyze how prepared the country is for domestic emergencies.