May the winds of freedom blow sand in your couscous

The kroner lives. Woo hoo.

Well who, except everyone, could have predicted this: “IRAQI policemen declared themselves holy warriors yesterday and vowed to take revenge for the deaths of their comrades in the town where ten police and a security guard were killed on Friday in the worst “friendly fire” incident of the Iraq conflict.” Inhabitants of Fallujah think this was a deliberate ambush to allow the American troops back into charge in the town they had to pull out of after killing protesters. Without any irony at all, Colin Powell, visiting Iraq, said that terrorists might try and sabotage the progress towards self-rule--by doing what, killing Iraqi police?--and that “the winds of freedom are blowing” across Iraq. Robert Fisk: “WE HAD to walk through a quarter of a mile of barbed wire to reach Colin Powell, the American Secretary of State, last night. We had to pass through four checkpoints, including three body searches. Apache helicopters circled the conference centre and Bradley fighting vehicles sat in the darkness outside.” Powell never left the protection of the barbed wire, and the air conditioning that ordinary Iraqis don’t have; they have to content themselves with being cooled by the winds of freedom.

Fisk has a good phrase: “the Coalition of the Willing Suspension of Disbelief.”

He also points out that there is no proof at all, much less any proof offered by the US government, that Al Qaida or other foreigner fighters are streaming into the country.

Iran is threatening to walk out of the IAEA, which just ordered it to prove by October that its nuclear program is non-military. What isn’t clear, at least to me, is whether the IAEA actually has the authority to do that. I believe Iran has been complying with all the procedures required by the ordinary rules & regs of the IAEA.

Santa Cruz city council has asked Congress to consider impeaching Bush for the Iraq war. The LA Times has an aw-what-a-cute-little-leftie-town article.

Dick Cheney on one of the Sunday talk shows played up the (non-existent) Iraq/Al Qaida, Iraq/9-11 connection, including the long discredited Mohammed Ata meeting in Prague.

That the Israeli might kill rather than exile Arafat is confirmed by the deputy prime minister.

It has been 20 years since the escape of 38 IRA prisoners from a prison van. A dinner and dance will be held to celebrate the anniversary, at the Holiday Inn in Letterkenny, Co. Donegal. Plan your vacations accordingly.

If the Scottish Parliament buildings are ever completed, at a very un-Scottish ten times over budget, their elevators may have a recorded voice warning, say, that “doorsh are closhing,” in the voice of Sean Connery.

L. Jean Lewis was a right-wing Republican who the 1st Bush admin gave a job she was totally unqualified for, in the RTC. She had once considered marketing anti-Bill Clinton t-shirts (after a little research, I see a couple of versions of this story, one is that it was after Clinton was elected, and it was anti-Hillary “Presidential Bitch” t-shirts and mugs, marketed from her government office. A good Salon article on her from 1998 says Ken Starr took over the investigation of her for that, and disappeared it). In 1992, 2 months before the elections, she filed a criminal referral relating to Morgan Guaranty Trust, and made sure to name the Clintons, their friends, and campaign contributors, and then repeatedly called the FBI to force them to publicize this before the election, which she later denied doing to the Senate Whitewater committees, along with illegally tape-recording an RTC lawyer and calling Clinton a “lying bastard” in e-mails (she then fainted and was never called back). Her legal fees were paid for by the same ultra-right-wing group that financed Paula Jones. Right after the 2000 elections, she compared Jesse Jackson to a malignant cancer cell and said his talk about civil rights violations in the Florida election was “bordering on sedition.” Anyway, this incompetent partisan perjurer started the whole Whitewater/Starr Report/Impeachment ball rolling. And has just been made chief of the Pentagon’s inspector general office. You will hear more about this.

News.google.com has a new feature: news alerts, whereby they send you email when your search term shows up in a news story.

The Arnold is endorsed by a firefighter’s union. He says “In my movie, 'Collateral Damage,' I was a firefighter, and that's when I realized how tough a job it is.” You weren’t a firefighter, you played a firefighter. Moron.