Today -100: January 31, 1925: Of fraud, renegades, and bananas

Former director of the Veterans’ Bureau, Charles Forbes, the biggest crook in the Harding Administration, is convicted, along with contractor John Thompson, of defrauding the government in contracts for vets’ hospitals.

Coolidge supports the Congressional Republican decision not to allow supporters of La Follette in the 1924 election back into the caucus. Fiorello La Guardia is particularly defiant.

Otto Braun (Social Democrat) is back as Minister-President (prime minister) of Prussia after the (Catholic) Zentrum Party fails to come to a coalition agreement with the right-wing and fascist parties.

Honduras will ban black immigrants. Banana companies have been using them to undercut wages. It doesn’t say where they’re importing them from.

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Today -100: July 14, 1923: Of putsches, lotteries, lynchings, panamas, and wireless chloroform

Hermann Erhardt, the Freikorps leader in the Kapp Putsch, escapes from prison, where he was awaiting trial for treason. Four hours after he asks for a bath, the guards begin to get suspicious...

It’s taking Harding and his party 48 hours to sail from Skagmore to Sewart, Alaska. He’s been playing bridge and shuffleboard. Also, there are movies, but the NYT fails to tell us which ones.

A French sergeant wins 1 million francs, which is the equivalent of some money, in a lottery, but he’s stuck in the army for the next 4 years.

In Columbia, Missouri, George Barkwell is acquitted of murder for his part in a lynching. Rep. Leonidas Dyer suggests that this shows the need for his always-thwarted federal anti-lynching bill.

I’m afraid the song “Yes, We Have No Bananas” slipped into the musical scene earlier this year without proper acknowledgment here, but in today’s paper we have 1) a Yale professor (admittedly of poly sci) in a sanitarium who says the title is indeed grammatically correct, if misleading, and 2) this ad one page earlier:

Scientific Breakthrough of the Day -100:  Hypnotism broadcast by radio, used as anaesthesia. It’s perfectly safe for other listeners-in, though: only people mesmerist/mind-reader Joseph Dunninger has worked with before in person will be affected.

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Today -100: July 23, 1913: Of state churches, the interests of negroes, coercing Mexico, banana protests, fires in factories, fires in prisons, barber riots, and perpetual motion

The House of Lords votes down the bill to disestablish the Anglican Church in Wales (i.e., they voted for antidisestablishmentarianism) until the issue is submitted to the judgment of the country in an election, because surely the next general election will turn on precisely this issue.

Pres. Wilson responds to a letter from Gaston Villard, chair of the NAACP, admitting that he plans to segregate government offices, “with the idea,” he writes, “that friction, or rather discontent and uneasiness which had prevailed in many departments would hereby be removed. It is as far as possible from being a movement against Negroes” but “in their interest.” So that’s okay then.

Headline of the Day -100: “Senate Talks of Coercing Mexico.” The US Senate discusses the Mexico situation, with many senators calling for military intervention, as was the custom. Purely to protect American citizens, of course. Albert Fall (R-New Mexico)’s resolution says that American citizens have the right to American protection for their lives AND PROPERTY anywhere in the world. In the House, William H. “Alfalfa Bill” Murray (D-Oklahoma) (who has to use that Alfalfa Bill thing to distinguish himself from Rep. William F. Murray of Massachusetts) introduces a resolution requiring the president to subdue Mexico militarily.

Disappointing Headline of the Day -100: “To Voice Banana Protest.” A delegation from Jamaica arrives to protest a duty being placed on bananas. See, wasn’t that disappointing? I’m sure we can all think of much more interesting banana protests.

50 mostly young female factory workers die in a fire in the Binghamton Clothing Company (later reports say 40, but as the only list of employees also burned up, the true number is not known). Although survivors blame the lack of adequate escape routes, the owners blame it on the state-mandated post-Triangle Shirtwaist Fire fire procedures: the girls were so used to fire drills that they ignored the fire alarms.

Scary Headline of the Day -100: “Men Roar in Cells as Sing Sing Burns.” Started in the prison factories. No one killed, no one escaped.

There is a barber riot in Harlem in connection with a strike called by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) Barbers’ Union. I’m not sure I’d feel safe having my hair cut by anyone calling themself a “Wobbly.”

An Italian invents a perpetual motion machine. It runs on the “caloric energy of the air,” which is totally a really thing. A later article describes the machine: “it consists essentially of a system of closed cup-shaped vessels containing a substance which vaporizes with extreme facility, and revolving, partly in air and partly in water, makes the machine work through successive vaporizations and condensations of the substance inside.”

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Today -100: July 12, 1913: Of overstimulated linemen, crazy lepers, the people’s fruit, and wanton and futile demonstrations

Headline of the Day -100: “Supposed Dead Man On Telegraph Pole An Overstimulated Lineman.” Someone spotted him and called the fire department, which spread out a net and climbed the poll before they realized that he was not an electrocuted corpse but was, in fact, snoring. Alcohol may have been involved.

Headline of the Day -100 (yeah, yeah, two headlines of the day, live with it): “Early, The Leper, Goes Crazy.”

The NYT appeals to the Senate not to put a tariff on the banana, the “people’s fruit.”

The governor of Oregon shows up at an IWW meeting outside a fruit-packing plant and, after hearing a strike leader say that the plant would be closed, got up on the soap box and said that the plant would be protected by all the resources of the state.

A male supporter of women’s suffrage, in what the London Times calls “another wanton and futile demonstration,” fires a toy pistol in the gallery of the House of Commons. Hilarity ensues.

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You won’t have Balls to kick around anymore

Not that it matters, since Blair and Brown have made Labour unelectable for a generation, but the Labour leadership contest took place today at the Labour Party conference. To the disappointment of every British headline writer, Ed Balls was eliminated in the third round of voting, but Ed Miliband was finally able to vanquish his older brother David, who was ahead of him in votes in each of the first three rounds. Awkward!

“You’re Fredo.” “No, you’re Fredo.”

This blog predicted David Miliband’s failure two years ago when he was photographed with a banana.



Ed Miliband is 40, has only been in Parliament five years. Like many European politicians, he is not married to his partner, with whom he has a child. When do you suppose that will be possible in puritan America?

News you can use

South Sudan plans to rebuild its cities in the shape of rhinos and giraffes.

The White House actually sent out someone to tell the press that Obama is a Christian.

A Disneyland hostess is suing to be allowed to wear a hijab. Did no one consider the obvious compromise?

The obvious compromise is Mickey Mouse ears over the hijab.

A man in a banana costume, brandishing a shotgun and his penis and shouting “something or other about white supremacy” in Washington state, is arrested for, among other things, indecent exposure (either because the banana costume was child-sized or because he was exposing himself to women, depending on which story you read). Name of the Day: the cop telling all this to the press: Sgt. Randy Pieper. Said Pieper, “he was drinking earlier in the day, but he didn’t really have a reason for the costume.”

Headline of the Day (and the photo caption’s pretty good too).

But he had a banana

Eyewitness Statement of the Day: “If he had had a gun he would’ve shot me. But he had a banana.”

British politics update for Americans

The Labour Party held its annual conference this week, and here’s all you need to know: Foreign Minister David Miliband, who had been the odds-on favorite to succeed Gordon Brown after Labour loses the next election, is now widely – and I mean widely – believed to have blown his chances by breaking a cardinal rule of politics: when you already resemble a chimpanzee to a not inconsiderable extent,



do not allow yourself to be photographed with a banana.


What Matthew Parris wrote when a tired Tony Blair accidentally spoke the word “banana” in the House of Commons in 1997, “once you have heard a person say ‘banana’, a sliver of the awe in which you had held them is lost, never to be recovered,” may be multiplied several-fold in the case of being seen holding one.

And we’ve got Americans, who heal the broken hearts of little Iraqi girls

Bush is in Tennessee today. At the airport he met with a Dr. Karla Christian, who performed free heart surgery on an Iraqi girl. Said Bush, “And the contrast couldn’t be more vivid. We got people in Iraq who murder the innocent to achieve their political objectives -- and we’ve got Americans, who heal the broken hearts of little Iraqi girls.” And other Americans, who turn those actions into self-congratulatory photo ops.

Last year some Nicaraguan banana plantation workers successfully sued Dole for using chemicals that made them sterile. Well, last week a superior court judge overturned the verdict and greatly reduced the damages award, citing the fact that the damages happened, you know, a long time ago, and saying that punitive damages shouldn’t be awarded against “a domestic corporation for injuries that occurred only in a foreign country”. Of course they were suing in American courts in the first place because when other workers sued in Nicaraguan courts and were awarded damages, Dole simply refused to pay up. This ruling will affect other pending cases. Dole’s lawyer Rick McKnight says, “These cases will dry up, and they should,” adding, “Hey, you know what else dried up? The sperm of our Central American plantation workers.” I may have made up that last bit.

Take into account their society and where they live

Last month I mentioned a lawsuit by some workers on a Dole banana plantation in Nicaragua sterilized by a Dow Chemical pesticide (which it seems Dow tried to pull from the market because of its dangerousness, but Dole threatened to sue Dow for breach of contract). Six of the workers won their case in a Los Angeles court. They’ve been awarded an initial $3.2 million, with more to come if the jury believes that Dole acted maliciously when it, for example, decided that informing workers about the pesticide in their own language was “not operationally feasible and does not need to be implemented.” A lawyer for Dow tried to tell the jurors (before the judge stopped him) that Nicaraguans deserve lower compensation for sterilization because they are of less value than members of other nationalities, suggesting the jurors “take into account their society and where they live,” assessing damages “in the context of their world and their society.”

Speaking of agribusiness, here is another convincing, to me at least, George Monbiot article on how “Biofuels could kill more people than the Iraq war.”

So there was no Daily Show tonight because the writers are striking against not being paid when the news satire they write is accessed on new media like a computer screen, just as if they were lowly, lowly bloggers.

Hey mister tally man, tally me sperm count

People have not stopped commenting on posts here, although it says “0 comments” on the last 6 posts. Bloody Haloscan.

Here’s Twitt Romney’s latest ad, in which he suggests that there’s no one like a bland Mormon to take on radical Muslims:



He says, “It’s this century’s nightmare: jihadism – violent, radical Islamic fundamentalism. Their goal is to unite the world under a single jihadist caliphate. To do that, they must collapse freedom-loving nations like us.” If the world is united in a single jihadist caliphate, who exactly is jihad being waged against, Mars?

Some workers on a Dole banana plantation in Nicaragua are suing Dole and Dow Chemical in a US court for allegedly over-exposing them to a pesticide that allegedly sterilized them. Dole’s douchebag lawyer is arguing that the plaintiffs have dysfunctional relationships and don’t really want kids: “Their stories were so inconsistent with the idea that they wanted to have children and wanted to build families.” So that’s okay then.

What is pure democracy?

Guardian headline: “Colombian Warlord Says US Firms Paid Death Squads for Bananas.”

Russia detained loads of anti-Putin and/or democracy activists, raided newspapers, and prevented reporters as well as demonstrators reaching a Russia-EU summit meeting. Said Putin, “What is pure democracy? It is a question of ... whether you want to see the glass half-full or half empty.” Yes, Vlad is a gulag half-full kind of guy.

Speaking of pure democracy, Kazakhstan’s parliament amends the constitution to eliminate term limits for “President” Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has been in power since Soviet times. Just for him. His successors after he dies or, ha ha, voluntarily gives up office, will again be restricted to two 7-year terms. (Correction: two 5-year terms.)

Who even knew that North Korea had a prime minister? Well, last month North Korean prime minister Pak Pong Ju was fired. His new job: manager of a chemical plant.

Random Friday Bush pictures (the wounded soldiers are from Walter Reed, wheeled over to the White House presumably so Bush can be pictured waving disinterestedly at them).

Bananas redux

I seem to be unable to leave the idea of the humor inherent in the word banana alone today, so here is a column from the October 29 1997 London Times, by Matthew Parris:

Blair’s eloquence slips on a banana skin

Yesterday Tony Blair said “banana” in the Commons.

It sounded odd from this Prime Minister: somehow beneath his dignity. The leader’s Brighton speech had been a triumph. “Vision ... passion ... the British soul ... beacon to the world ...” had echoed round the hall. “Fear lost. Hope won. The giving age began!” he had cried. “Britain! A young country!”

Now here he was, looking tired, minus yet more tufts of hair, and saying “banana”. Not the giving banana, the young banana or the beacon banana. Just banana.

The occasion was a statement to the Commons on the conclusion of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. Mr Blair began gurgling away in grand style: “Delighted to welcome Commonwealth Heads ... my thanks to the people of Scotland...” he gushed.

“Warmth of Her Majesty’s reception ... Economic Declaration on ‘Promoting Shared Prosperity’ ... Harare Declaration of 1991", the Prime Minister rumbled, as the capital letters rolled. “Arrangements for African, Caribbean and Pacific ...”

But oops! What was this? We sensed a tiny frisson of alarm ruffle Mr Blair’s composure as his eye caught the next word. He almost gulped. “... banana exporters.” He said “banana” very quickly and rather quietly, anxious to move on. Mr Blair soon recovered his dignity and his capital letters. “Code of Good Practice ... South Asia Regional Fund ... every Highly Indebted Poor Country ...” But once you have heard a person say “banana”, a sliver of the awe in which you had held them is lost, never to be recovered. Something similar happened when John Gummer said “porpoise” at the dispatch box, twice, in 1993.

And there was more to come. Perhaps in some schoolboy pact to make Blair say “banana” as much as possible, Tory backbenchers kept asking him about the Caribbean. John Wilkinson (C, Ruislip Northwood) demanded to know how the Prime Minister would “safeguard the banana regime”. Blair refused to say “banana regime” but could not avoid saying “banana” once again in his reply.

Bowen Wells (C, Hertford and Stortford) leapt up. Did he understand the importance of this fruit to Commonwealth nations? “Economies,” said Blair, pained, “that are completely dependent on, er, one particular, er, form of produce ...”

A new phase characterized by this increasing sectarian violence that requires us obviously to adapt to that new phase

Today Bush signed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, which somehow I hadn’t heard of before, which classifies as terrorism, and increases the penalties for, any acts against “animal enterprises” (i.e., companies that use or sell animals) which reduce their profits, including non-violent acts such as blockades, trespassing, freeing animals, “threats,” etc. Terrorism.

Actually, acts of animal terrorism are committed twice daily in my home when I give my cat her pills, although she and I might have differing ideas about which of us is committing the terrorist acts.

The White House website also informs us that Thursday is “National Methamphetamine Awareness Day.” So don’t forget to be aware of meth on Thursday. The proclamation informs us that “Chronic use can lead to violent behavior, paranoia, and an inability to cope with the ordinary demands of life”... oh, you’re all way ahead of me, aren’t you?

NBC has decided to use the term “civil war” to describe the situation in Iraq. Did they even consider my compromise alternative, “crapfest”?

National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley disagrees, but does say that “We’re clearly in a new phase characterized by this increasing sectarian violence that requires us obviously to adapt to that new phase”. Not very Ken Burns-y, is it? Cue plaintive violin music: “My dearest Martha: this new phase characterized by this increasing sectarian violence that requires us obviously to adapt to that new phrase drags on, and I grow weary...”

Hadley continued, “Obviously, everyone would agree things are not proceeding well enough or fast enough.” You’ll notice the word “enough” assumes that things are in fact proceeding in the right direction and at a measurable pace.

He also said that while “there’s been a lot of discussion within the American press about the need to adapt our strategy, a lot of discussion about Baker-Hamilton, a lot of discussion on talk shows... it’s important, I think, for the President to send the message to Prime Minister Maliki that while he is listening to all of these voices for ideas, is open to ideas, that in the end of the day to reassure Prime Minister Maliki that it is the President who will be crafting the way forward on Iraq”. Yes, George W. Bush crafting the way forward, how... reassuring.

At that briefing, Tony Insert-Snow-Related-Pun-Here denied that there was a civil war in Iraq because it was not, he said, a battle for territory. “What you do have is sectarian violence that seems to be less aimed at gaining full control over an area than expressing differences”. Expressing differences. Like a letter to the editor, but slightly more horrific.

Robin Wright and Thomas Ricks of the WaPo say, without sourcing or further explanation, that Cheney was in fact “basically summoned” by Saudi Arabia.

Bush, meanwhile, was in Estonia today, meeting with Estonian President Herman Munster.



Everyone assumes that Alexander Litvinenko received the fatal dosage of radiation poisoning in that London sushi restaurant from an agent of Putin, but has anyone asked whether he ordered the Godzilla sushi?

In Ecuadoran presidential elections, Rafael Correa defeats “pro-American banana tycoon” Alvaro Noboa. I don’t have any analysis of that, I just wanted to be able to say “pro-American banana tycoon.”

“Banana magnate” is also funny.

“Banana baron.”

Really, anything in the whole banana area is amusing.

Banana banana banana.

Just saying.

An old vehicle

From the Daily Telegraph: “A robber who held up a bookmaker’s shop with a banana was jailed for six years yesterday.” I’ve provided a link, but do you really want to use it? I say leave that sentence to stand there in all its perfection.

LAT columnist George Skelton says of Governor Terminator, “When a governor claims he’s not a politician, it’s time to get him a civics book or a good shrink.” That’s not quite fair. He’s also been in lots of movies, but no one would ever call him an actor.

In a ham-handed piece of agitprop, House Republicans drove a 1935 Ford Coupe, manufactured the same year as Social Security was inaugurated, to the Capitol to provide an image so compelling that I can’t actually find it online to steal in order to illustrate this post, to illustrate, in Denny Hastert’s words, “that the Social Security system is an old vehicle for retirement security.” The owner of the car was pretty annoyed at the insult to his lovingly restored vehicle.

Actually, I like the idea of using cars to represent policies. Here’s an automotive symbol of the new bankruptcy bill:

Yes, we have no banana revolutions today

Belarus’s dictator, and king of the combover, Aleksander Lukashenko insists that unlike Georgia or Ukraine, there will be no people’s revolution in Belarus, whether “rose, orange or banana.”


Long live the Banana Revolution!

What, no “defenestration?”

The city of Carmel, California passes an emergency ban on new art galleries. The town has one gallery for every 34 residents, so you can see how that would constitute an emergency.

The German police shoot Santa Claus dead, after he robs a bank.

Sold on eBay for $26: this picture of the Virgin Mary eating a grilled cheese sandwich with an image of herself on it. I think I can guess what the next item for sale will be.




The British Council conducted a survey of non-native-English-speakers of their favorite English words:

1 Mother
2 Passion
3 Smile
4 Love
5 Eternity
6 Fantastic
7 Destiny
8 Freedom
9 Liberty
10 Tranquillity
11 Peace
12 Blossom
13 Sunshine
14 Sweetheart
15 Gorgeous
16 Cherish
17 Enthusiasm
18 Hope
19 Grace
20 Rainbow
21 Blue
22 Sunflower
23 Twinkle
24 Serendipity
25 Bliss
26 Lullaby
27 Sophisticated
28 Renaissance
29 Cute
30 Cosy
31 Butterfly
32 Galaxy
33 Hilarious
34 Moment
35 Extravaganza
36 Aqua
37 Sentiment
38 Cosmopolitan
39 Bubble
40 Pumpkin
41 Banana
42 Lollipop
43 If
44 Bumblebee
45 Giggle
46 Paradox
47 Delicacy
48 Peekaboo
49 Umbrella
50 Kangaroo
51 Flabbergasted
52 Hippopotamus
53 Gothic
54 Coconut
55 Smashing
56 Whoops
57 Tickle
58 Loquacious
59 Flip-flop
60 Smithereens
61 Oi
62 Gazebo
63 Hiccup
64 Hodgepodge
65 Shipshape
66 Explosion
67 Fuselage
68 Zing
69 Gum
70 Hen night

Probably coerced / I'm a survivor / snot from the nose of the Great Buddha

“OH YES, HERE IS JOHNNY, GOODNESS GRACIOUS ME.”: Just what India needs: an Italian widow as prime minister. Still, better a corrupt dynasty than the Hindu-supremist BJP party, which ran on the slogan “India’s Shining,” presumably intended to refer to India’s recent economic success rather than to invoke the image of a Bollywood remake of the Stanley Kubrick film of the Stephen King novel, only this time with a lot more signing and dancing. One of the congresscritters who saw the prison photos, Rep Trent Franks (R-Ark), who doesn’t know much about art but knows what he likes, disapproved of a photo of a prisoner sodomizing himself with a banana. “My conclusion,” Rep Franks concluded, “is that that was probably coerced somehow.” Ya think? The London Times has a headline that encapsulates an irony I might have missed: “Rumsfeld Visits Prison at Centre of Storm to Tell Troops 'I'm a Survivor.'” Of course he never had to survive--for instance--being coerced, somehow, to sodomize himself with a banana. I think. The Indy article on this just drips sarcasm. One detail I hadn’t heard: when the US reopened Abu Ghraib, they hung a sign “America is a friend of all the Iraqi people.” I guess it’s better than Arbeit macht frei. I imagine we’ll find out that those troops survived an ideological screening process. Certainly their questions to him were at the trivial or Larry King level. Link, but don’t bother. Rummy also says that if it were up to him, he’d certainly release all the pictures, but those darned lawyers won’t let him. Lynndie England is claiming that she was ordered to pose for those photos. She’s not a callous sadistic bitch, she just plays one on television. The European Commission’s envoy to Slovakia, a Dutchman, suggested that Roma children be removed from their parents and placed in boarding schools so that they learn “normal social values.” Like racism. The Dutch tv interviewer asked about the morality of this; and Eric Van der Linden said that the parents could be given a few bucks to overcome their resistance. He has been reprimanded, but not fired. From the Telegraph: “Priests at one of Japan's most famous temples have taken steps to block the sale of a sweet marketed as the "Snot from the nose of the Great Buddha". Tuesday Texas is due to execute a paranoid schizophrenic, whose yelling during his trial caused him to be excluded from most of it, and who will not speak to his lawyer because he does not understand “hell law” (is there any other kind?) and thinks he has received a pardon from Satan, not understanding that Satan is no longer governor.

Banana magnate

The Bush daughters turn 21 today...

Switzerland, whose referenda are often as good an argument against direct democracy as California’s, very narrowly defeated one that would have turned away nearly all refugees.

Corporations are moving their intellectual property off-shore to tax havens--trademarks, patents, logos, etc.--so that the parent company pays inflated fees to its subsidiaries that can be written off in the US.

The annoying Joseph Lieberman asks the right question: What did the Saudis know, and when did they know it.

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/328/nation/CIA_paying_millions_in_Qaeda_huntP.shtml
Actually, the URL tells you what that one’s about.

Putin vetoes the bill outlawing reporting or criticizing “counter-terrorism” operations (including the whole Chechen war), so that’s one for the good guys.

Someone dies in a really stupid way, and it’s an Oxford student. Human catapult stunt (using a medieval trebuchet)(look it up). The student was named Dino Yankov, and now Dino is extinct.

The gay (not that there’s anything wrong with that) fascist (not that.. oh wait) Jörg Haider quits politics again (he’ll no doubt have changed his mind by the time you read this) after his party drops from 27% in 1999 to 10% this week, which is still way too high, but I’ll take it.

(10 minutes later): In fact he did change his mind.

And yet another “populist” military leader wins an election in Latin America shortly after leading a coup attempt. This time it’s Ecuador. Haven’t really formed an opinion on the guy yet, but this is obviously a bad trend. Of course his opponent was a banana magnate (!) and the richest man in Ecuador, which isn’t a good trend either. Still, it’s a step up from the former president known as El Loco.

The ACLU hires as a lobbyist the creepy-mustachioed Bob Barr.

And Philip Morris’s hq in Melbourne, Australia bans smoking (in 1995 the company got NYC to exempt it from its workplace smoking laws by threatening to leave the city).

The US is trying to tighten sanctions on Iraq further, banning it receiving a heart medication and the antibiotic Cipro. US ambassador to the UN Negroponte says the US does not believe these (and other) goods “have a benign, civilian, or purely humanitarian purpose.” Which is bad news for me, since I have Cipro in my medicine cabinet.

George Monbiot in the Guardian today reminds us that the next target after Afghanistan was supposed to be Somalia, but the ratings weren’t good enough. “It is plain that the US government's decision to go to war came first, its chosen target second, and its reason for attacking that country third.”

Proof that there is a God: A lightning bolt struck a group of worshippers during an open air church service in Zimbabwe on Sunday, killing 10 people, the Herald newspaper said yesterday.

A Montenegrin family thought a Second World War artillery shell which had been in their yard for 50 years was the ideal replacement for a broken table leg until it exploded, slightly injuring eight people about to eat. The family in Danilovgrad were preparing the local speciality of grilled pork fat when the old shell went off, the Yugoslav daily Vecernje Novosti said yesterday.

9/11

Well, you have to be impressed. They hijacked 4 planes and didn't get caught even once, and I presume they got the exact planes they were looking for, since all 4 were trans-continental flights, presumably chosen for their full fuel tanks. Where was the Pennsylvania plane going?

I've forgotten who was the first Congresscritter I saw today crass enough to use this as an excuse for supporting Star Wars (yeah, I'd have thought it did the reverse too, but you know that, against all logic, the fight against missile defense just lost.)

One thing to remember is that the US makes well-deserved enemies without noticing. To wit, two stories I had planned to mention the next time I e-mailed, which is now: 1) Remember the banana wars? Over the years I've sent out a couple of humorous Parliamentary sketches from the Times about attempts during PM's Question Time to make Blair say the word banana. Anyway, the US, acting on behalf of either its banana industry (it has none) or just possibly large multinationals like Dole who contribute heavily to candidates of both parties, succeeded by threat of trade war in forcing the EU to stop protecting its former colonies by buying their produce at above-world-market prices. As a result, several small countries the US couldn't give a shit about, except when it's invading them, have gone bankrupt. Well, it didn't make the NY Times, but Libya just offered to buy the entire banana crops of St Vincent, Grenada (remember them?) and Dominica at above-market prices.

2) Remember Bush's first act in office? The global gag rule on
international family planning services. There was a story in the New Statesman about what this actually meant on the ground, detailing clinics that have had to close in Kenya, Ukraine etc and what they did.

And that's what happens when the US isn't paying attention.

When the news reached Dubya, he was reading to children, which is just about within his capabilities. He finished the book.

Oh, speaking of Curious George, the Daily Show reported that the character's owners of same were pissed that Jews for Jesus were ripping them off in their propaganda. They could get millions for copyright infringement, but, as the show said, it was likely that the defendants would try to Jew-for-Jesus them down.