The flaming wiener incident

One warm sunny spring day Malton was lying on the pavememt in front of Joe's garage. Malton was some kind of Lab-Dob cross that happens when careless dog owners don't mind their dogs. He was getting a little long in the tooth by then. Didn't even notice the Loomis truck that pulled in and ran over his head.

Probably remembering his good old days, and boy did he ever have them. Malton was a stray that was hanging around the Toronto airport. Joe ran a shuttle service for folks taking off and coming into that airport. People of a certain age remember the Toronto airport as the Malton airport, which is how Malton got his name.

Joe had a pretty good business going. Still going to this day as far as I know. Fleet of vans shuttling folks to and from the airport. Bought this garage and hired a couple of mechanics to service the van fleet. Took on outside work just to make the garage side of the business more profitable.

Maybe made a mistake when he hired Kipling. Not that Kipling isn't a great mechanic. One of the best. But Kipling pretty much marches to his own drummer. The fun started when Joe gave Kip the keys to the garage and let him use the premises for side jobs on his own account. Pretty soon Kipling is working till nine or ten or twelve every night, using Joe's hard assets to cover his own non-existant overhead. That's how the business schools would call it.

They'd be right, but there was other stuff going on. While Kipling did fix cars, there soon developed what might be considered a party atmosphere at Joe's garage after Joe went home. Kipling had helpers. The helpers were pot-heads or alcoholics or both. So you'd pop in there at nine in the evening, and three or four guys would be sitting in lawn chairs, obviously well into their cups, watching two or three other guys do work. I tended to be one of the guys in the chairs myself. I've always preferred watching work to doing any.

What with the general level of substance abuse, these evenings often became quite chaotic. There'd be guys having gun-fights with the grease guns. That's a messy business, let me tell you. And a surprise acetylene bomb could show up anywhere at any time. But the real fun started when Malton showed up at the garage.

Joe was nice enough to pick up a stray dog at the airport, but not quite nice enough to take him home. So Malton lived at Joe's garage. Pretty dull time from nine to four, but then things picked up for him.

Hanging out with the boys, Malton learned how to party. He was a dope-fiend. Liked to drink too. Had a special affinity for rum 'n eggnog. Man could he pound that stuff down! There was more than a few nights that Malton and me consumed about the same amount, passed out on his doggie blanket together, and woke up with the same hangover.

We got to painting up Malton with different colors. One night he'd be primer red, next night he'd be primer grey with primer red spots. One night the spotted dog, pretty much sideways, and loving every moment, went after the hotdog I had in my hand. That's a no-no in my book. I figured, gotta teach the mutt some manners.

So I poured a good size puddle of gasoline on the floor, threw the rest of the wiener in it, and when Malton went for the wiener I tossed a cigarette butt in the puddle.

KapOOfff!

Did that scare Malton off? No way. He comes racing outta the fireball with a flaming wiener clenched in his jaws! He's singed from nose to tail, but he got the prize!

Not long after that incident, one of the lads came up with the idea that Joe's exotic fish in the aquarium in the front office might like to join the fun too. Poured a half bottle of Canadian Club into the fish tank. I have to say I advised against that, although I was more concerned about the CC than I was the fish. After all, what the fuck is a drunken fish gonna do? Swim crooked?

So Joe comes in the next morning and all his fish are dead.

That was Kipling's last day at work.

World Bank had advance knowledge of Libyan-NATO revolution

The World Bank is normally in the business of lending money to countries that don’t have enough. Those tend to be what are technically termed poor countries. As the poor country struggles to repay the loans, the loan repayments themselves become a significant cause of poverty. Indebtedness to the World Bank becomes a vicious cycle, the net result of which is that the poorest end up poorer at the end of the cycle than they were at the beginning.

During his term as head of the African Union Colonel Gaddafi had proposed an alternative to the World Bank that would allow the poorest of Africa’s countries to escape this cycle. He envisioned a pan-African monetary union to which the wealthier countries such as Libya would donate and the poorest would receive interest-free loans or outright grants. Needless to say, such an enterprise would render the World Bank irrelevant.

It comes as no surprise then to learn that the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund came up with a plan to take over Libya’s banking system before the Gaddafi plan put them out of business on the continent. Speaking to Reuters, the new Governor of Libya’s central bank let it slip that those organizations have been busying themselves for two to three years preparing a “new” banking model for the country.

Which raises an interesting question; why?  Why would the IMF and the World Bank be planning a new banking system for Libya two years before the revolution broke out?

Libya's new central bank rolls out red carpet for IMF

Libya’s new central bank has a new governor, Omar Elkaber, and Omar’s got a brand new plan.

Gone are the bad old days when Libya had huge cash reserves and massive annual budget surpluses. That kind of irresponsible money management is deader than Gaddafi. According to Omar, Libya’s banking system needs a complete overhaul, and who better to guide that overhaul than the IMF and the World Bank?

Omar says that the IMF and the World Bank have already spent two or three years laying the groundwork for the new Libyan central bank. How incredibly serendipitous!  How could they have known two or three years ago that a spontaneous revolution would break out in February of 2011? What a fantastic stroke of good fortune!

“The IMF and World Bank have a roadmap” Omar informs us.

I’ll just bet they do. Does it show Greece on it? How about Iceland?..

Let the plunderfest begin.

Berlusconi vs.Cain: why the Puritans set sail for America instead of Italy

After all, Italy would have been a lot closer.

A few hundred years later we are still witnessing the fall-out. Cain's in big trouble. He might have sexually intimidated a former campaign worker because he was taller than she was. That's not all. There's another former employee coming out of the woodwork with a truly scandalous claim; Cain might have touched her butt. LET THE LAW-SUITS FLY!

Meanwhile, back in Italy, Berlusconi is hanging onto power. This last little while has been tough. He's been accused of boinking a underage belly-dancer. Not being taller, not inadvertently touching her butt-cheeks, but a full-on trousers-down boink. And normally nobody in Italy would bat an eye, but this boinkee was underage! And, double up on your poker chips here folks, SHE WAS A MORROCAN! A child of Islam!

Well, old Silvio has been pushing the envelope his whole career, but he might have pushed it too far this time, even for those oh-so-tolerant Italian voters. They've been putting up with the "bunga-bunga" nonsense for as long as they've been re-electing Berlusconi, but this could be the proverbial straw...

Meanwhile, here in the land of the Puritans, the Hermanator can kiss his presidential aspirations goodbye because ten years ago he might have touched somebody's ass.

Shame.

High Command in IDF and NATO balk at Iran attack

The war-mongers on the political stage, in Israel and America and Brussels, are chomping at the bit to let the smart bombs loose on Iran. After the glorious victory in Libya they figure the sky's the limit. Iran? Why not?

Meanwhile, the career military guys everywhere see something else. Disaster. Sure, we can out-smart them and out-bomb them. But at what cost?

Unless the good guys can pull off a completely devastating and unexpected first strike on Tehran, there will be consequences, and the consequences will not be landing in Brussels and Washington. They will be landing in Haifa and Tel Aviv.

Such a first strike will of course seriously besmirch whatever dubious claim we still have to being the "good guys".

Such a first strike will do more for Islamic solidarity than anything we've seen since The Prophet went to heaven.

The right-wing politicos are all aboard, of course. From Netanyahu to the Beltway think-tankers the apostles of manifest destiny, both American and Israeli, can't wait to give the devil his due. God is on our side.

 Let's bomb Iran now.

I'll let Meir Dagan, recently retired head of Mossad, speak for the apostates; " attacking Iran is the stupidest idea I've ever heard ."

I'm with Mr. Dagan. Let us pray that the apostates prevail.

Israel fine tunes attack strategies for coming war with Iran

Israel test fired a ballistic missile at its Palmahim Air Force Base yesterday. The test comes after a week of training exercises in Sardinia during which a fleet of Israeli fighter jets took part in long range attack games with aircraft from various NATO countries.

The surge in long range attack planning comes at a time when increasingly bellicose statements are coming out of the Knesset. Prime Minister Netanyahu, Defense Minister Barak, and Foreign Minister Lieberman have all been beating the drum recently for an attack on Iran.

That doesn’t mean that Israel’s usual targets in Gaza  should breathe easy. Any attack on Iran will probably be accompanied by an attempt to impose a final solution of the Hamas problem.

In the meantime, Netanyahu has announced 2000 new apartments for East Jerusalem. Needless to say, he’s not building them for the Palestinians who live there now. This too will fall off the front page when the bombs start falling on Iran.

Libyan rebels thank NATO by hoisting Al Qaeda flag

Well, there's gratitude for you. No sooner do we declare victory than our ungrateful freedom fighters are hoisting the Al Qaeda flag all over the place. Isn't that the crew we've been taking on in the war on terror? Al Qaeda? A trillion bucks we spend fighting the war on terror and we get this? Talk to them, Hillary!

Meanwhile, newly elected leader and CIA stooge Abdul al-Keeb pretends to know nothing about these developments. One must give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, he's spent virtually no time in Libya. Ever. How would he know what's going on?  But he did have the forsight to incorporate the "Libya Energy and Technology Company" a few years ago. Hmmm... maybe he knew something was brewing?

He was democratically elected to the top spot by three or four other guys on the National Transitional Council just yesterday. And one must commend those Libyans on the haste with which they have successfully transitioned to democracy. The NATO "projectiles of democracy" have barely stopped raining down and they've already democratically elected a new leader.

 Abdul was the dark horse in the race, mainly because nobody had ever heard of him. The non-elected NTC elects a guy nobody ever heard of. They claim in their news release that it was in gratitude for his financial support during the uprising.

Wait a minute. This guy was a college professor in the US for most of his life. Financial support? What did he do, send them twenty bucks? Oh, there's that Libyan Energy and Technology thing...  don't know how much Libyan energy and technology he would have been trading without the blessing of Gadafi...

So there's a few loose ends here folks, but sit tight. I'm sure that there are plausible explanations being spun inside the Beltway as I type these words.

Meanwhile, don't sweat those Al Qaeda flags.