This article was first published in The eXile on June 8, 2000, issue 92.

How can we best promote world peace? As always, Thomas Friedman has a stunningly original answer: by building more McDonald’s. Here’s Friedman’s “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention” from his new book The Lexus and the Olive Tree: (more…)

This article was first published in The eXile on December 2, 2005.

Everything about Russia in the 90s was cool. We mean everything.

America in the 90s, on the other hand, offers plenty to hate to the spleen-endowed eXhole. Problem is, you’re probably one of the reasons why the 90s were so bad. (more…)

This article was first published in The eXile on November 27, 2002

Ever wanna go to Kathmandu? Not me. I was never a hippie. The hippie types always talked about heading off to Nepal for spiritual enlightenment, but it sounded like my idea of Hell: a bunch of grimy beggars grabbing at you, yelling gibberish, trying to sell you yak dung as prime-grade hash. Some of the old acid casualties in my community college classes had been there and always said it was a real deep experience, but it didn’t seem to’ve done those zombie trolls much good. Most of them were on SSI, paid by the State of California to watch reruns of Gilligan’s Island and not bother anybody with their acid flashbacks. (more…)

How does your extended family shake out politically? Me, I come from a rabid tribe of right-wingers containing a renegade band of fulminating lefties, plus a couple of pleasant and reasonable moderates nobody listens to.

Fortunately we’re all scattered across the country, trying to make sure each relative has his or her own state in which to be an opinionated pain in the ass. This prevents family quarrels. Or at least, it did for many years. But now, with the internet and all, family harmony is steadily breaking down. Communication, that’s the problem. If you give people the means to do it, they’ll tell you what they think, and that’s when you get those mass-killings we read so much about these days. (more…)

You never know what bizarre creatures you’ll stir to action when you go after a corrupt beast like Megan McArdle. But what I saw after my expose on McArdle in yesterday’s Alternet was like sending a bathyscaph down to the deep ocean floor and stirring up the encrusted rot: suddenly these H.P. Lovecraft creatures swim into view, monsters whom you never knew existed–giant bear-trap jaws with little mosquito lamps dangling in front of their teeth…

I’m going to share two such creatures who wrote me yesterday in defense of their heroine, Megan McArdle. First, a creepy rightwing midget named Matthew Vadum. (more…)

I’ve always taken it for granted that brokers disseminate lies through the media to tweak property values. But a couple of weeks ago, I became a small cog in the national real estate propaganda machine myself while reporting for the New York edition of Time Out—on Kensington, Brooklyn, a supposedly “hot” new neighborhood stretch bordering wealthy the Park Slope district. Given the slick nature of the magazine, I filed a smoothed over narrative of what I saw—Bengalis, Hispanics and Hasids, chattering away amongst themselves in ancient dialects. I left out the trash filled yards, chop shops and nasty eyed stares from the locals. But a questioning email came back from my editor: where are the boutiques, cafes and charming restaurants? My answer, that there weren’t any, didn’t cut it with him. (more…)

Six Apart, the company behind the popular TypePad blogging platform, just went Marie Antoinette on us all. With all the jobs being cut in the paper industry and increasing numbers of reporters stuck with nothing to do but moan, the company decided to help out. Introducing the “TypePad Journalist Bailout Program”: a free TypePad Pro blog account for every unemployed professional journalist!  A media famine is afoot, journalists don’t have papers to work for. So…”Let them blog!” For free, of course. All of which helps Six Apart’s bottom line…

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Mormon Baptismal Font: plenty of room for everybody.

Statement of the Grand Inquisitor: We have to admire the sheer chutzpah of the Mormons. Whereas we struggle with faulty humankind, inquisiting people, torturing them, trying to shove them toward the true faith, the Mormons have worked out a way to avoid so much heavy lifting. They take care of things after death. Dead people, y’see, are so agreeable. No backtalk. If you tell a dead guy he’s now a by-god upstanding member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, you won’t get any argument.

Of course, such a bold approach to gathering souls is bound to involve a lot of blowback from the older religions. Especially the Jews—you know how they are. For decades now Jewish leaders have been trying to get the Mormons to stop baptizing their dead relatives, especially the victims of the Holocaust. As Ernest Michel, honorary chairman of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors, points out in The New York Times, “They suffered enough.”
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What’s so funny?

If you really want to appreciate the highly realistic portrait of America the Coen brothers have been working on for twenty-odd (very odd) years now, I recommend reading the “viewer responses” to Burn After Reading on a popular film info site like Fandango. They’re amazing and appalling, with certain key qualities predominant: nutty monomania, crippling literal-mindedness, weird selective prudery, crazed upbeat energy, sad pomposity. In other words, the Coens aren’t just making this stuff up, don’tcha know?

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Today, we sifted through a buttloads of your fan letters and picked the first ones that floated to the top, including three letters from Iranian terrorists, a knee-scraping nightlife tool from Moscow, another cheap-ass reader, and much, much less… (more…)

It’s been only two days, and already we’ve received dozens of shamelessly fawning letters from readers around the world. For this inaugural [sic], we’ve invited media celebrity Tony Snow (more…)

Photographic evidence of Tibet’s military, circa 1950

FRESNO, CA — Writing a column on the military history of Tibet seemed like a good idea in the good old days, a week ago, before I started actually trying to research it. I’ve never, ever had a harder time finding decent info on a topic.

Browse Column

One reason is sheer shame; the Brits, for instance, don’t want anybody to know they invaded Tibet in 1904 and slaughtered a whole bunch of Tibetans for no reason except they were bored.

But some of the stuff on Tibetan military history is just so damn weird it made me feel like that scene in Ghostbusters where Rick Moranis gets possessed by some ancient demon and starts ranting: “During the rectification of the Vuldronaii the Traveller came as a very large and moving Torb. Then of course in the third reconciliation of the last of the Meketrex supplicants they chose a new form for him, that of a Sloar. Many Shubs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Sloar that day I can tell you.” (more…)

Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya

One of the great mysteries of the twentieth century was the way Britain got away with pillaging nearly every country on the planet without suffering any retribution. I’ve spent a long, bitter time brooding over this experimental proof that there’s no such thing as karma. Among the reasons I’ve found for this failure to prosecute are the reluctance of the raped to report their sufferings, the stupidity and credulity of American scholars vis-a-vis their Oxbridge colleagues, and the charmed life that seems to reward those individuals and nations lucky enough to lack any vestige of conscience. (more…)

A [sic] BEFORE DYING

Dear editor.

Now that i have retired i would like to take this opportunity to thank you for all the support that you’ve given me over the years. But i still think that you’re papers full of shit!!!!

LOVE

BORIS??????

Dear Mr. ??????,

Are you ever going to die? Folks, we think it’s time to cut the bullshit here and to lay odds on the first Moscow Ghoul Pool of the third millennium. Send us your swami-soothsayer guesses as to when you think Yeltsin’s pipes will burst for the last time. (more…)

In Honor of Women’s day, Death Porn offers a glimpse of the better sex at work, at play, and at murder.

Soap on a Rope

A kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Romanova, tried to hang a 20 month old baby with a silk robe. She sent the little tyke to the gallows because said tyke’s mommie was banging Mrs. Romanova’s boyfriend.

Femme Fatale: The Miss Militsia Competition heats up during the shoot-the-swarthy-foreigner leg of the competition.

What better way to get your boyfriend’s attention than to execute his latest fling’s baby and send him swinging from the rafters (or in this case, from the low kitchen overhead lamp)? Somehow, the intrepid police managed to barge in and save the child just in time. (more…)