The Simpsons, I mean Bushes, are going to Africa!

An ITN cameraman is killed in Iraq, the 17th journalist of the war and if I’m not very much mistaken the first not killed by the US.

Anglers in northern Italy are using live kittens as bait to catch catfish. If that isn’t icky enough for you, try to find footage of those Iranian siamese twins joined at the head.

Bush is going into the bush, the first president to visit Africa in his first term, and possibly the first sitting Republican president (what, Teddy Roosevelt didn’t go to shoot something?). He claims it’s about AIDS and humanitarianism (the extent of which can be seen in appointing an Eli Lilly executive to run the AIDS program, despite a compete lack of experience with AIDS or Africa). But of course it’s about oil deposits off the West African coast, which evidently the neo-Cons and pro-Israel types want. Oil has done nothing for the people of Nigeria or Angola except to increase corruption and pay for civil wars. Studies have said that discovering oil is one of the worst things that can happen to a Third World country.

Anyway, in Senegal, Bush will go to a slavery museum, where he will be shown the weights, neck rings and leg irons used on slaves being sent to America. No newspaper anywhere in the world will run this story next to a picture of prisoners being sent to Guantanamo. Which is why I should run a newspaper. When Nelson Mandela visited the museum, he asked to spend some time alone in the isolation room used for recalcitrant slaves. Speaking of which, the 400 residents of Gorée island will not be allowed out of their homes while Bush is around, because god forbid he should meet an actual native. Basically, he’s going to airports in 5 African countries, and the heads of state will come out to meet him and he’ll say he visited Africa.

I don’t think we’re ever going to get a credible explanation for why US troops in Iraq seized those 11 Turkish troops.