"The reason for this is that you never know"

Cartoono the Magnificent has outdone himself, Mr. Bones!

What we need now is someone like Sam Parker from the United States Institute of Peace to delve deep into American history and show how yesterday's historic fiasco was the inevitable reflection of the sectarian battle between the rust-belt Democrats in Detroit and the confederate creationist free-marketeers of the Old South. Because that, mutatis mutandis as we say, is what the suits and the corporate media have made of Iraq. Takes one to know one, I guess.

The specimen appears to have turned into what it hates worst in all the world, namely a carto caricaturist. It does not deploy words with reference to the meanings conventionally attached to them, it paints little pictures with the denotations. The Free Kurds™ are not a nation. They are not even a province, they are only made of words. They were manufactured from words last Wednesday afternoon, at about the same time when the thousand-year Pact of Steel between President Davis and Baron Zaibatsu was being finalized.

Most mutatis mutandibus fans would, I expect, feel a little embarrassed to find that their happy band has been increased by the unilateral and preëmptive self-addition of Miss Lynx and Mister Badger and the learned Dr. Cartonoclastes. With all due respect, would not Mutatio vincit omnia befit the Mu’ámara Junction gentry better? For behold, O Bones! Cartoono just said out loud and expressis verbis what he has been skulkin’ around mutterin’ since before we became acquainted with him. Once again, please, Sam!

... sectarian battle ... is what the suits and the corporate media have made of Iraq ....

Why, prior to the aggression of March 2003, natives and locals of the soon-to-be-former al-‘Iráq did not even have a word for at-tá’ifiyya, let alone the thing! ‘Sectarianism’ came in with Sultán Bremer and Khalílzád Pasha, along with cell phones and financial corruption and Domino Democracy™. Everbody knows that. (Everybody at Mu’ámara Junction)

Tripier tripe and more odoriferous neo-baloney than Cartoono purveys would be hard to find. One point about it I like especially is how it turns those "suits and corporate media" into Übermenschen and supercorps: less than six years ago, wicked ‘sectarianism’ did not exist at all in a Mesopotamia happily progressing under the (stern but) enlightened rule of her Natural Masters™; now, only about two thosand days later, wicked ‘sectarianism’ is as ubiquitous in ex-‘Iráq as kudzu in California or rabbits in Australia. What hath Wolfowitz wrought?

Lynx Badger Cartoonoclastes LLC would certainly not dispute the ubiquity, especially in the immediate vicinity of the International Zone neorégime. If poor M. al-Málikí be not a wicked ‘sectarian’, why, the very words "wicked ‘sectarian’" have no referents whatever and Núrí Kamál Jawád I, the Hannibal of Da‘wa, is, mutatis mutandis, a political unicorn and a square circle. Also black and white and re[a]d all over.

Speaking of ‘read’, sir, Dr. Cartoonoclastes should not be misunderstood as inculcating merely that the corporate media fiends have made the former al-‘Iráq appear -- to ignorant Homelanders and couch potato[e]s who cannot decipher cuneiform chickentracks as their betters can -- as if wicked ‘sectarianism’ rules the root. Wicked ‘sectarianism’ really does rule the roost. When a competent agitprop artist like Cartoono undertakes to shill apologise for a crew of Natural Masters™, there is bound to be at least a small pony of realism somewhere in the vast pile of poop that ensues. Natural Masters may be relied on to notice when their mastery is in abeyance and advise their hired (or volo) hands accordingly. Mutatin’ the given mutanda, the hired (or volo) hands may then type ‘sectarianism’ to mean "Unfortunately the Hannibal of Da‘wa has not yet been deposed." Or whatever.

As thee know, Mr. Bones, what makes a cartoon be cartoonish is the style of the representation; correspondence or noncorrespondence to the things represented is nothing to the point. Thee are not to assume, sir, that Miss Lynx and Mister Badger and Dr. Cartoonoclastes actually believe in their own more factious and fantastic parodies. On the other hand, though, it is contrary to our own house rules to that the conspiratorialist gentry are cynics who clearly understand in foro interiori that their "wicked ‘sectarianism’" is merely a façon de parler, a clever twistification designed to move others with, themselves unmoved. [1]

More practically, I get the distinct impression that Cartoono has given up expecting that his native and local patrons in the former al-‘Iráq and the Universal Sunnintern are going to get their Natural Mastery™ back any day now. The Hannibal of Da‘wa may not be in like Flynn, but he looks to be tolerably well embedded. Accordingly:

"Just for the heck of it, I'm going to post occasional notes about Japanese coverage of financial issues ... The reason for this is that you never know." Thus Dr. Cartoonoclastes. Mr. Milton has it "Thus sang the uncouth Swain to th' Okes and rills, While the still morn went out with Sandals gray, He touch'd the tender stops of various Quills, With eager thought warbling his Dorick lay: And now the Sun had stretch'd out all the hills, And now was dropt into the Western bay; At last he rose, and twitch'd his Mantle blew: To morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new."

Ah, so!

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[1] Thee may further reflect, Mr. Bones, that Cartoono the Magnificent's favourite verbal toy, ‘sectarian[ism]’, already had an asymmetrical warfare side to it before it fell into the paws of the militant Mu’ámariyya. If anybody spontaneously refers to her own preferred brand of Superstition or Enthusiasm as "a sect," she and I have never been introduced. To conjugate the verb,

(1) I am a disinterested seeker of Truth and Justice. (2) Thee are a tad partisan at times. (3) M. al-Málikí is a wicked sectarian.

As regards the former al-‘Iráq, though it is in fact the case that many in Cartoono’s patron theocommunity refuse to believe that they -- non-heretical non-hillbillies, Arabophone Sons of the Sunnintern -- constitute no more than one-fifth of the population of the provinces in question, yet they could concede the merely arithmetical point without much loss. Natural Mastery™ is not to be ascertained by counting noses, sir!

In both Eslámestán and in the former Christojudæandom a vaguely quantitative factor does, however, enter in. ‘Sectarianism’ and at-tá’ifiyya would not have become the words that they are if soi-disant Reformed Christojudæans had heavily outnumbered Papist Christojudæans in about the years 925-1300/1517-1870, or if there had come to be five Twelvers for every Orthodox Mohammedan in 1430/2009 instead of the other way around. Both Schimpfwörter assume not just that the second-class human being inhabits a chip cut off from the block, but further that her abode really is a chip, i.e., a schismatic fragment much smaller than the One True Big Deal that it (got) broke off from.

But God knows best.