Have you ever seen the United States take the blame for anything?

NYT headline: “Israelis Kill a Leader of Islamic Jihad, Which Vows Revenge.” But isn’t “revenge” actually two or three rungs below “jihad” in intensity? Really, if your name is already Islamic Jihad, there isn’t much left in the way of escalation with which to threaten, now is there?

Iceland has started hunting whales again.

Actor Rob Lowe, whose last foray into real-life politics ended up with him filming himself having sex with two girls, one under-aged, at the Democratic convention--and I’ve still never seen the film, which I understand is very funny in that he always keeps his good side to the camera, and I leave it to your imagination good side of what--has joined Team Terminator. Before the last election, Martin Sheen called me up to ask me to vote for Gray Davis. What I want to know before I vote is, who is Donna endorsing?

Quote of the day, from the mayor of Toronto, on the cause of the blackouts: “Have you ever seen the United States take the blame for anything?”

The Indy explains how the late unlamented Idi Amin’s coup was supported by Israel, as part of its program of keeping a civil war in Sudan going. The British also created Amin, although they later considered assassinating him. Anyway, the bastard’s dead, and they’re gonna bury him rather than feed him to the crocodiles.

In news of Brits imprisoned and tortured abroad:
1) 6 Brits improbably arrested in Saudi Arabia for anti-Western bombings in 2000 and tortured into signing confessions, have finally been released after 2½ years. The Saudis have tried to bribe them with something like £1m each not to sue for human rights abuses, but there are no takers.
2) Britain has agreed that its citizens held in Guantanamo, being pressured into signing confessions, would serve their full sentences in the UK. Britain refused a poisoned offer from Rumsfeld to let it try its citizens itself. But Blair knew that a fair trial would result in acquittals and didn’t want these people acquitted, so he’s willing to let a foreign kangaroo court sentence people to his own prisons.

Last week it was foot surgery. This week, to top that: vagina cosmetic surgery.

Colin Powell phoned the president/dictator of Pakistan to apologize for US troops killing 2 Pakistani soldiers last week. But it seems to have taken a few days, and isn’t apologizing for your soldiers killing their soldiers--an act of war by definition--George Uday Bush’s job rather than Colin’s?

Although the US denies it, that helicopter did deliberately knock down that mosque’s flag, as the video shows. Idiots.