As the news emerges that the past week's death toll is actually three times what the US and so-called Iraqi government originally claimed -- that's over 1300 people -- another 41 people and 3 US troops are blown to smithereens today. I have noticed a trend. As time goes on, I see more articles citing "experts" who bemoan Iraq's slide in "anarchy."

Doomsayers long have warned that Iraq was turning into a failed state like Somalia or Taliban-era Afghanistan, a regional black hole. It's far too early to write Iraq off as a quagmire, but the threat of contagious instability looms large.

Mark Sedra, a researcher specializing in rebuilding post-conflict countries at the Bonn International Center for Conversion, a German think tank[, says] "Now the main goal is just creating a state that controls instability and contains the high levels of violence that prevail at the moment and prevents that violence from spilling over into neighboring states or destabilizing the region."

[Just a note to mention that Afghanistan wasn't a failed state until the US made it fail -- ask any woman forced to put on a burqa any time she needed to buy a chicken.]

"All of this is creating great, great decentralization and a failure to provide services," said Phebe Marr, an Iraq specialist at the United States Institute for Peace, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

Will Iraq's increasing violence, fed by obviously intentional acts of sabotage, spread into the more rural areas of iraq and then into neighboring Syria and Iran? I guess Dick and Condi might hope so, but to me it doesn't seem likely, since this violence is based on some very local rivalries that go beyond mere Sunni and Shi'ite. But the interesting part of the analyses is that they all seem to fix on an expectation that current trends will bring Iraq into anarchy -- or that Iraq already is in anarchy.

Look in the pockets of Iraqis whose jobs take them around Baghdad every day and you are likely to find a clutch of passes and identity cards, one for every police, military or militia checkpoint they may run into.

"This one is says I'm Badr, this one I show to police, and I have the American press pass and my ordinary ID. I applied for a Mehdi Army pass on Friday but it hasn't arrived yet," said one Iraqi driver working for a foreign media organisation.

Anyone notice anything rather...Hoppean about this situation?

The sheer proliferation of armed groups -- some official, some unofficial and some that operate in the murky middle ground -- underscores the lawlessness of Iraq, where neither U.S. forces who invaded in 2003 nor the Iraqi armed forces they trained have been able to impose their authority on the whole country.

I think it rather underscores an overdose of law in Iraq. Even so, it is obvious that the people who are supposed to be the state in Iraq -- the US forces and their Iraqi quislings -- are simply not. They have no authority except where they actually outnumber everyone else, like in Baghdad's Green Zone. That's less control than the mob has in New York. Iraqis see them as just another militia/ministate for which they need to carry just another ID. The curfew put in place after the first day of attacks, despite reports saying they kept violence down, had nearly no effect.

It is perfectly clear that no bunch of former exiles posing as a state is going to rein in the violence that beseiges Iraqis daily. Iraqis will have to realize this and finally begin to do something more about it than merely carrying a weapon. Lone guns can't hold back an army of fanatics who are trying to ignite a civil war. Iraqis are going to have to create their own associations and organizations to provide security and services and banish the warlords and militants. They will have to create anarchy to banish the chaos. We'll see if the market will push them along the way.

I learned today that the French government has shut down soup kitchens in the country, apparently, for offending Islam. Some of the free food given out to people in need contains pork, a traditional French, indeed, European ingredient. It's also delicious. Did I mention it's free? The problem people have is that it would make Muslim hobos search for a different free meal, somewhere else, which amounts to discrimination. Since France can't be seen in any way to so much as inconvenience for a moment either a hobo or a Muslim, and certainly not someone who is both, I suppose this action is to be expected. Sure, the French piggies claim it's all on "'administrative grounds,' claiming the soup kitchens do not have the correct papers." I'm just having trouble believing that the only places without the proper papers needed to give away food to hungry poor people were the ones serving ham sandwiches.

A clincher seems to be that these soup kitchens are run by "right-wing" groups who are purposely warding off Muslims with their pork soup. But could it be more likely that as nationalists, they're simply insisting upon serving traditional French food? Maybe not, but it's worth consideration before jumping to conclusions that serve the interests of religious morons.

I think the guy on the left is probably more angry that the East Peshawar L'oréal ran out of his color of rouge, and also that he was born without an upper lip. And way in the back -- wait is this Pakistan or Planet of the Apes? I don't see, in light of this behavior, why it can't be both.

I recently had a conversation with my dad where he opined authoritatively that China's boom would bust because its environment was being despoiled so quickly. I said, uh, European and American cities were putrid balls of toxins during the Industrial Revolution. Then advances came about that fixed most of the problems. The same will happen in China.

So today I come across an article in the London Times about New Year's rice dumplings.

"Ms Wang was happy to queue because she was confident a well-known shop would not try to flout food safety rules, a big temptation in get-rich-quick China."

Hm. It seems the market is on its way to taking care of bad food in China.

"Mr Jiao sold about 70 tonnes of yuanxiao this year — that is 4.2 million rice balls. He boasts that his rice powder taps into a new-found environmental awareness among Chinese consumers. The grains are soaked for five hours and ground for 24 hours in traditional stone mills. Everything is hand-made. His customers seem appreciative. “I prefer to buy ‘green’ food,” one shopper said."

Hm. It seems the market is taking care of bad environmental practices in China.

I had a bad cannoli the other night. Well, really, I just ate one too many and it was like 10pm, and my stomach hurt in the morning. But I think I'm gonna bomb the Italian embassy, and maybe take a Swiss guy hostage, since, you know, there are some Italian speakers in Switzerland...that will teach Veniero's to sell me a rich, delicious cannoli so late at night, and locate themselves one block from my apartment. 112 years ago. Anyway.

This cartoon thing is rather hilarious. Not that I mind when government buildings are burned down, but have a good reason, assholes. That some Danish paper printed a goofy cartoon of Muhammad is not one of those. And that a Norwegian paper REprinted it is certainly not. There's practically a fatwa out against anyone who so much as laid eyes on the thing. This is why everyone in the world is afraid of you, you morons. Your religion is stupid. You kill and maim and bomb and torch because your feelings got hurt by something 5000 miles away in some newspaper with 30K circulation written in a language you don't understand. I mean, you people even attacked New York for the crimes of a bunch of people in Washington. Even bombing a small, sparse town in West Virginia would have killed more American imperialists than were killed on 9/11. You did it because you are idiots.

Just like when the US attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq and other countries, it creates more of what it is fighting, you, by threatening to kidnap Danes (but being satisfied with a German) and attacking embassies, create more cartoons!

From the American front:

"I've been getting a lot of e-mails about it, and I'm distributing them all," said Omary, a Damascus native who sells real estate in Northern Virginia. "There is a limit to freedom. There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world. Let's have some respect."

Dear Mr. Omary: Fuck off and die. Muhammad sucks the shit out of pigs' asses.

A few miles away at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society mosque in Sterling, Zaki Al Barzinji, 16, was equally upset.

"Just because you can say something doesn't mean you should say something," the teenager said. "If somebody showed a picture of the pope with a bomb on his head, that would cause a great public outcry. Nobody would be talking about freedom of speech."

When Sinead O'Connor ripped up a picture of the pope, do you recall Irish embassies being torched in Spain? Brits being kidnapped in Italy? No, I didn't think so, because it didn't happen. People sneered, called her a bitch, and got on with their lives. It's what people do when they are offended in civilization.

"Technically, you have the right to walk into a crowded theater and yell 'Fire,' " said Uzma Unus, 34, a teacher in Sterling who is also vice president of ADAMS. "But is that responsible?"

That you can even compare yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, which upon hearing is a very legit reason to jump up and run for the nearest exit, to printing a cartoon of Muhammad in a newspaper is completely asinine. But it is illustrative of the fact that Muslims feel that the image of the prophet, and their feelings about him, are more valuable than lives and property. And therefore, that Muslims are stupid.

Several [American Muslims] were critical of the violent reactions of some Muslims in Europe and the Middle East. The better way to respond, they added, is through dialogue and peaceful protests, such as the recently launched boycott of Danish dairy products.

Dear Stupid Muslim Fellow Countrymen: Are you actually protesting the fact that the State of Denmark merely did not use force to prohibit the publication of a cartoon that offends morons like you? Are you actually punishing Danish farmers, who, I assure you, had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the publication of the cartoon, for the publication of said cartoon? How do you wipe your ass or tie your shoes by yourself? It's a wonder you even know how to use language properly.

In conclusion, Muslims are stupid. I will of course continue to defend them verbally against being bombed and shot and stolen from by the agents of my government, but let's face it -- that's only because they're too stupid to defend themselves. And who will drive cabs and sell me slurpees?

Oh yeah! Hindus!

Update: Iranian paper to launch holocaust cartoon competition. My dad is gonna be in heaven when those hit the internet. I suppose if there's a proper way to retaliate, this is it, though Jews have been putting up with this in the Arab world for...pretty much the entire last century.

Also, it's not like Muhammad has never been drawn before. I'm pretty sure most of these drawings went down fine without anything being burned down.