McDubya's

Dr. McManus,

Thank you for your correspondence. Your suggestions for corporate sponsorship of The New Iraq^tm are brilliant. We suggest you set up shop immediately as a consultant to the Pentagon.

However, you should know that our sources indicate that the U.S. Department of Defense has already made closed-door deals with a group of leading American corporations to create a new fast-food chain, which will be granted a monopoly throughout Iraq.

The chain, to be called McDubya's, will be overseen by the military, and developed and managed by a consortium including McDonalds, Halliburton, and Archer Daniels Midland.

Primarily, this will serve as another way to get rid of the massive surplus of produce created each year by subsidized American agribusiness. This overproduction is already destroying the farming economies of Third World nations (as we dump our surpluses into their markets), and leading to the epidemic of obesity in the U.S.

But why shouldn't the Iraqi people bear some of the burden as well? It's the least they can do, in return for our liberating them!

For political reasons, McDubya's will serve only Mecca Cola and Freedom Fries. As a sop to Coalition members Spain, Poland, Australia, and of course Britain, select McDubya's outlets will also serve paella, pierogis, ostrich burgers, and bangers and mash.

(This last is conditional upon your prime minister, Mr. Blair, explaining to George Bush exactly what "bangers and mash" are.)

Perhaps this all sounds far-fetched -- "a few fries short of a Happy Meal," as we say here in the States? We offer the photo below as irrefutable evidence (as seen on Some Grrls):

We will forward any information we obtain about how to become a McDubya's franchisee. It should be a real growth business -- we hear there are exciting plans for expanding into new markets...

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Mecca Cola challenges US rival

Mr Mathlouthi says America must change its policies

By Verity Murphy BBC News Online

Coke is no longer it. Or at least it won't be if Tawfik Mathlouthi has anything to do with it.

-Ultimately it is the consumer who will make the decision- Coca-Cola

Mr Mathlouthi is the French entrepreneur behind Mecca Cola, a new soft drink designed to cash in on anti-American sentiment around the world.

He hopes to make Mecca Cola the soft drink of choice for Muslims everywhere and thus push out that icon of American capitalism Coca-Cola.

It is all about combating "America's imperialism and Zionism by providing a substitute for American goods and increasing the blockade of countries boycotting American goods," Mr Mathlouthi told BBC News Online.