Colonel Muammar al-Gathafi lives in a really big air-conditioned tent with cushy rugs and incredible chandeliers. How do I know? I visited the tent on the 40th anniversary of the Libyan revolution, when a 27-year-old al-Gathafi overthrew the Libya government, Che Guavera-style (his hero).

The controversial Libyan leader, who helped train and fund insurgent groups all over the world, now wants to compete in the marketplace of ideas -- and he and his supporters think his Green Book may offer a new perspective. One Green Book idea: every citizen is entitled to one mortgage-free house, or tent. That's the way it is for 5.5 million Libyan citizens.

Following al-Gathafi's recent trip to the United States, where he spoke for an hour and a half at the United Nations -- questioning the assassinations of Kennedy and King -- former U.S. Congresswoman organized a delegation to visit Libya and attend the First International Conference of the Green Book Supporters Society.

IN PRAISE OF INDECENCY: THE LEADING INVESTIGATIVE SATIRIST SOUNDS OFF ON HYPOCRISY, CENSORSHIP AND FREE EXPRESSION

WHO’S TO SAY WHAT’S OBSCENE? : POLTICS, CULTURE AND COMEDY IN AMERICA TODAY

CONFESSIONS OF A RAVING, UNCONFINED NUT: MISADVENTURES IN THE COUNTERCULTURE

It’s time our national government at last enshrines its most critical artistic need, that of “Satirist-Laureate.” The first nod must go to the man who has pioneered the idiom in modern America---Paul Krassner.

Since the days of Lenny Bruce, Krassner (a good friend, but no relation) has been poking brilliant fun at every sacred horse’s ass in American politics and culture.

He also remains our cutting edge critic on censorship and its pornographic twin. His two recent books slash to the core of the utter hypocrisy of the government sticking its nose in what we read and write, think and smoke.

There’s no armor, it turns out, for conscience.

So our men and women are coming home from the killing fields wounded in their heads, used up, greeted only by the military’s own meat grinder of inadequate health care and intolerance for “weakness.”

“Frankly, in my more than 25 years of clinical practice, I’ve never seen such immense emotional suffering and psychological brokenness.” This is what whistleblower psychiatrist Kernan Manion wrote recently to President Obama about his experience counseling Marines at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, as reported by Salon.

In September, Manion, having been told to “cease and desist all further correspondence with the government,” was fired by the Navy for his urgent, outspoken communiqués about the mental-health minefield the military has on its hands. Two months later, of course, the issue of PTSD was blown into the national headlines by the massacre at Fort Hood. And a day after that, according to Salon, the body of a Marine was found at Camp Lejeune and a fellow Marine was arrested for the murder.

A Muslim family sits across of me in café, in a largely Muslim Asia country. An older woman shyly hunches over and desperately trying to avoid eye contact with the giant plasma screen TV, blazing loud music on the popular music video channel, MTV. The scantily dressed presenter introduces her ‘top song’ for the week. Beyonce, dressed in so very little, annoyingly reiterates that she is “a single lady.” The old woman’s son is mesmerized by what he sees. He pays no attention to his mother, young wife or even his own son who wreaks havoc in the coffee shop. The man’s T-Shirt reads: “what the fxxx are you looking at?”

Respecting the message on his T-Shirt, I try to keep to myself, but find it increasingly difficult. The wife is completely covered, all but her face. The contradictions are ample, overwhelming even.

The attire of the family, the attitude of the ladies and even the man with the provocative T-Shirt are all signs of the cultural schizophrenia that permeates many societies in the so-called Third World. It’s a side effect of globalization that few wish to talk about.