Revenge of the Toddlers

Best terrorist name of the week: Israelis who bombed a high school on the West Bank call themselves “Revenge of the Toddlers.” A Luis Buñuel movie in the ‘70s had a Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus; it’s always nice to see life imitating surrealist art.

The Spectator is already claiming that Syria was part of 9/11.

The most repulsive website ever: http://www.virginme.com/

Headline in the Independent: “First Iraq Conference Says Democracy Is the Priority.” Another headline: “American Soldiers Fire on Political Rally, Killing at Least 10 Civilians.” I guess that would be a no. This came right after the new “governor” of Mosul said that cooperation with the US would be necessary. The crowd was unconvinced, and I’m not sure being shot at immediately after made the case.

In the 1920s Baghdad was 40% Jewish. So what happened?

The head of Chile’s secret police under Pinochet is sentenced to 15 years.

In Bridgeport, CT, an 89-year old is being tried for murder for smothering his 85-year old wife of 63 years to end her pain. String him up, I say!

WARNING, my sickest joke ever: Ali, the kid whose arms got torn off by a US air strike, finally flies to Kuwait for medical treatment--and boy are his lack of arms tired!

But seriously folks, I notice that one of the 3 districts into which we’re dividing Iraq--temporarily, like we divided Korea, and Germany, and Vietnam--is named Central. I thought the lesson from South Los Angeles is that there is great stigma attached to the C word, because of the looting and rioting in 1992, which the then-Bush Admin blamed on welfare programs, because they didn’t have Rumsfeld around to explain to them that freedom is untidy (loosely adopted from the Guardian’s US reporter).

I hadn’t thought to do the math before, but even if the US “freed” them, there are 23 million of them, at a cost of well over $100 billion. Yes, you do have to wonder what a similar per capita expenditure could make in, say, Africa.