Stupid and cruel

Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov denies having his former bodyguard Umar Israilov, who had filed a complaint against him at the European Court of Human Rights, killed on the streets of Vienna. Said Kadyrov, “Excuse me, but it would be so stupid and cruel to kill a person in the city center. Why would I need to do this?”

Because you’re stupid and cruel.

This has been another edition of simple answers to stupid questions.

A full day in the United States Senate

Elections, elections. Chavez’s referendum lost “for now,” as he put it, words he famously used after the failure of his 1992 coup attempt, when he had surrendered and was allowed to broadcast a call for the other coup commanders (Chavez surrendered first) to do the same. He seems rather subdued today, considering 51% of the electorate have turned out to be “traitors,” as he called opponents of the referendum last week.

And Putin’s party “wins” the Russian parliamentary elections. Wouldn’t a straightforward dictatorship without the trappings of election which fool no one just be simpler? Or hold the election, but make up the results, as in Chechnya where there was a 99% turnout and a 99% vote for United Russia. Instead, they went to really a lot of effort to coerce millions of people into getting absentee ballots and filling them out as directed. Seems like a lot of wasted effort to me, but perhaps threatening people and breaking up demonstrations is just how they stay warm.

Andrei Lugovoi, the man believed to have murdered Alexander Litvinenko with polonium, has been elected to the Duma, gaining parliamentary immunity. Hurrah for democracy!

Bush made another little speech attacking Congress this morning for not doing his bidding fast enough on the budget, Telecom amnesty, warrantless electronic surveillance, and the alternative minimum tax. He even made a little joke: “In a political maneuver designed to block my ability to make recess appointments, congressional leaders arranged for a senator to come in every three days or so, bang a gavel, wait for about 30 seconds, bang a gavel again, and then leave. Under the Senate rules, this counts as a full day. If 30 seconds is a full day, no wonder Congress has got a lot of work to do.” He’s just jealous that they get to bang a gavel and he doesn’t. And because if they gave him one, it would take him a full day just to figure out how to make it work.

Now if he could only find some other sort of symbol...

What’s wrong with putting a bag over her head?

We knew that members of the police were involved in the reprisal killings in Tal Afar earlier this week. There were even reports, which I haven’t heard confirmed, that the Iraqi military and police shot at each other as the military tried to stop the massacres. 18 of the police were arrested. And very shortly afterwards, the government, provincial rather than national near as I can make out, simply ordered them released. They may or may not have been re-arrested since then.

It’s disheartening when a thuggish and criminally stupid regime that is starving to death those of its citizens it doesn’t beat to death gets the unanimous public backing of its neighbors, as Zimbabwe’s Mugabe just has from the 14-nation Southern African Development Community (listen to its anthem here). That’s all I have to say about that.

Monty Python’s Terry Jones expresses his disgust at the Iranian treatment of the British sailors & marines: “And as for compelling poor servicewoman Faye Turney to wear a black headscarf, and then allowing the picture to be posted around the world - have the Iranians no concept of civilised behaviour? For God’s sake, what’s wrong with putting a bag over her head? ... It is also unacceptable that these British captives should be made to talk on television and say things that they may regret later. If the Iranians put duct tape over their mouths, like we do to our captives...” You get the idea.

Speaking of putting a bag over her head, the Bushies are bitching about Nancy Pelosi’s planned trip to Syria, which sends the wrong message. As opposed to Bush’s meeting this week with Gen. Vladimir Shamanov, the “Butcher of Chechnya.” While they’ve acknowledged that that meeting was a mistake, I haven’t noticed them doing anything to clarify their attitude towards the Butcher.

From the Butcher of Chechnya to the Kangaroo Skinner from Oz. David Hicks, the Australian who fought against the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan in 2001 before fleeing and selling his guns, being captured and spending 5 years in Guantanamo, plead guilty after his lawyer was kicked out of the military tribunal for refusing to sign an agreement to abide by rules that had not been written yet. The plea agreement includes provisions that he renounce all his previous claims about being beaten and tortured in Gitmo, declare that his detention was entirely lawful, not speak to the media for one year after his release, not sue the US for having been tortured, and not profit from, say, a book deal. And you know something? It’s kind of refreshing. At long last the US has stopped pretending that it doesn’t torture or that it has any interest in investigating allegations of abuse or torture. That the prosecutors had the authority to make such a deal, threatening Hicks with more years of confinement if he persisted in his claims of torture, tells you everything you need to know. He will serve out his sentence in an Australian prison, John Howard being willing to imprison one of his nationals on the basis of this miserable excuse for a trial. One wonders if he’s also promised to arrest Hicks if he violates the gag order.

Victim of circumstances

Trust the Chinese to screw up what should have been a hilarious news story about a fraudulent investment scam involving the breeding of giant ants by sentencing its organizer to death.

Putin has hinted with his usual subtlety that his successor next year will be Sergei Ivanov, promoting him from defense minister to first deputy prime minister.


The two have worked together since the good old KGB days. His resume isn’t encouraging, and as defense minister he’s often threatened Georgia and other neighboring countries, but I can’t say I know much about him as a person. Two years ago, his son was not charged for running over and killing an old lady while speeding through Moscow and probably running a light (according to a witness who was never seen again). Several other members of the Putin clique, all from St Petersburg, were also promoted.

And Putin fired the “elected” president of Chechnya, Alu Alkhanov, in favor of 30-year old prime minister slash death squad leader Ramzan Kadyrov. Not sure what that’s all about (or whether this changes the date of the next elections from 2008); I’m embarrassed to say I’ve rather lost track of Chechnya. Alkhanov has been given the job of deputy justice minister in Russia.

I’ve just created a new label for posts about Chechnya. I see that in a 2001 post, I quoted Ivanov calling a colonel who raped and strangled an 18-year old Chechen woman a “victim of circumstances.” Lovely.

The London Times reports that, as Spain is beginning a trial for the Madrid train bombings of 2004, the US is refusing to allow Spain access to the Al Qaida leader who was in charge of the ring, Mustafa Setmarian Nasar, currently being held in one of our fine secret prisons. Spain can’t file for extradition, because the US never officially arrested him. Here’s the killer detail: the US used to let Spain question prisoners held in Guantanamo (before the bombings, they were trying to find out about Setmarian), but no longer does so, to punish Spain for pulling its troops out of Iraq by increasing the likelihood that future terrorist attacks on Spain will succeed.

Mr. Bush, tear down this concentration camp

Bush met German Chancellor Angela Merkel. He said twice that he talked with her alone in the Oval Office, which is interesting since she doesn’t seem to know English and he sure as hell doesn’t speak German.


But it’s not like he was listening anyway. Although he claimed to have been “touched” and “uplifted” by hearing about her experiences living in both tyranny and freedom, he dismissed the concerns she expressed about Guantanamo by calling her ignorant:

Yes, she brought up the subject, and I can understand why she brought it up, because there’s some misperceptions about Guantanamo. First of all, I urge any journalist to go down there and look at how the folks that are being detained there are treated. These are people picked up off a battlefield who want to do harm. A lot of folks have been released from Guantanamo.

So they’re dangerous but a lot of them have been released. I see a Willie Horton ad in the future. And journalists can just go there and talk to them, who knew? Bush called Guantanamo

a necessary part of protecting the American people, and so long as the war on terror goes on, and so long as there’s a threat, we will, inevitably need to hold people that would do ourselves harm in a system that -- in which people will be treated humanely, and in which, ultimately, there is going to be a end, which is a legal system.

Pfew, for a second there I thought he was going to say “final solution.”


The acting Prime Minister of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov says that with all the men killed there over the last decade, the only solution, really, is polygamy. Granted, this guy’s answer to pretty much everything, including potholes, bird flu and spam e-mail, is always “let’s legalize polygamy.”

For a month, the Israeli military has been cutting off parts of the West Bank from other parts of the West Bank, preventing travel between them, without actually announcing it as a new policy. You know what would help with this, according to Ramzan Kadyrov? Polygamy.

Boy I wish I had some more items so I could string that out into a proper running joke. You know what help me with this post? Polygamy.

They need to stay at home

I think I need to clarify my last post about the Bushies’ new spin. With the backlash against the attempt to swift-boat (or michael-mooreize) Murtha, they’ve decided on this new tack of focusing on wishy-washy D’s like Biden, which is most of them, who won’t call for an immediate pull-out but would prefer not to occupy Iraq forever, and, instead of portraying them as defeatist cut & runners, paint them as unoriginal copycats, “adopting key portions of the administration’s plan for victory.” By pretending that there are no substantive policy differences (which in Biden’s case isn’t far from the truth, which is precisely why they chose him to stand in for all centrist Democrats), they can claim that any criticism must be partisan in nature. In other words, they are once again pretending to be uniters, not dividers.

Speaking of dividing, Bush talked about “securing the border” today in Arizona. He lauded something called “interior repatriation,” which means dumping illegal immigrants well inside Mexico. How exactly the United States has the power to put someone on a bus in a foreign country and keep them on that bus until it reaches its destination, I do not know. He said, “We want to make it clear that when people violate immigration laws, they’re going to be sent home, and they need to stay at home.” And it’s no television for you either, young man!

In the rest of the speech, he talked about streamlining deportations, increasing the size of the border patrol and giving it lots of fancy toys, a temporary worker program not leading to permanent residence or citizenship, and so forth. He talked of immigrants as illegal workers, murderers, child molesters, gang members, etc, but his speech was carefully written to avoid conferring upon them even the humanity of the singular personal pronoun; that is, he never calls them “he” or “she,” they are always part of a depersonalized horde. Or possibly a depersonalized school, as in fish, since he also derides the current “catch and release” policy.

I like how the Indy puts it: “Six years after Grozny was blasted to smithereens on the orders of Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, it was claimed that the separatist-minded people of Chechnya now support the man who commanded the almost total destruction of their capital.” “President” Alu Alkhanov described the elections as “democratic, honest and transparent,” speaking, the Indy points out, amid the ruins of the city: “A bombed out Soviet-style apartment block seemed like an unlikely prop for feel-good propaganda but the authorities obviously had no choice.” The caption to this AP photo is “Chechen police guard the Finance ministry during a news conference of Chechya's president, Alu Alkhanov in the Chechen capital of Grozny, Monday, Nov. 28, 2005.”


Putin is pretending this is some sort of purple-finger moment, claiming, for fuck’s sake, that the Chechen people “have shown that no one can scare them.”

They should have been doing what they have been demanding of us to do

Pakistani dictator Musharraf, tired of being accused (correctly) of tolerating madrasas and training camps that churn out terrorists for export to the rest of the world, including two of the London bombers, has hit back at Britain, and in a weird, douchebaggy way he has a point:

“They should have been doing what they have been demanding of us to do — to ban extremist groups like they asked us to do here in Pakistan and which I have done.”

Of course I’m not agreeing that the West needs to do any such thing, but he is right about the hypocrisy exhibited by the US, Britain etc when they go beyond the legitimate demand that Muslim countries arrest criminals, and insist as well that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia crack down on preaching, close schools, and ban political organizations (yes, legitimate political activity can be difficult to disentangle from the other kind in those non-democracies, but a good rule of thumb is that if the activity would be protected by the First Amendment in this country, we shouldn’t ask for it to be punished elsewhere), that Palestine censor its media to eliminate “incitement” and “provocation,” and that someone, anyone, just shut Al Jazeera the fuck down already.

Rather like the indignation Russia expressed to the United States after Nightline broadcast an interview with Chechen rebel/terrorist (but he really wants to direct) Shamil Basayev. Funny, you never hear Vladimir Putin say of the Chechens, “They hate us for our freedom.”

Something’s up with the Bushies and Latin American policy, but I don’t know what. Roger Noriega, Assistant Secretary of State for Pissing All over Latin America Because It’s Ours Goddammit, has abruptly resigned from the government for reasons that are unclear but seem to have to do with the appointment of Caleb McCarry as “Cuba Transition Coordinator.” Worth keeping an eye on.

The greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century

The US military has completely exonerated the soldiers who shot at the car of Italian journalist/hostage Giuliana Sgrena, killing the secret service agent. The army says that they were only acting according to the procedures for checkpoints, which evidently involve shooting anything that moves several hundred times. Anyway, this report was conveniently released (but not to the public yet) while Berlusconi was busy putting together a new government.

The last nail in John Bolton’s coffin: last summer the British foreign secretary complained to Colin Powell that Bolton was sabotaging European negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. And Newsweek says that two years ago Britain demanded that Bolton be kept off the team negotiating with Libya over its nuclear program. In both cases (and North Korea) Bolton preferred regime change to nuclear non-proliferation, which was supposed to be his job. Actually, the person I really blame is Colin Powell, who let Cheney & the neo-Cons foist this turd on him, and didn’t insist that he be fired when he proved so wholly incapable of doing his job.

On the front page of the NYT this morning was this headline: “Rice and Cheney Are Said to Push Iraqi Politicians on Stalemate.” Rice and Cheney, not exactly the poster children for compromise themselves, are they? The interesting question is who leaked this and why. If a deal is suddenly made tomorrow, it will look like it was done in response to American pressure, which will just undercut the legitimacy of the government. So now they’re damned if they do, damned if they don’t. If it was leaked from the American side, possibly the idea was to show that the US still calls the shots, given that any deal will probably leave former American golden boy Iyad Allawi out in the cold.

Putin today called the collapse of the Soviet Union a catastrophe, but doesn’t say what should have been done to keep it together. Possibly the sorts of things he does in Chechnya to keep it within what remains of the Russian Empire.

There will be much less evil now

Boris Gryzlov, speaker of the Russian Duma, on the death/assassination of former Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov: “The elimination of a terrorist of international standing only means that there will be much less evil now.” Something to look forward to then, the less evil I mean. Less evil would be nice.

Speaking of less evil, Kofi Annan has proposed an international treaty to outlaw terrorism, which will surprise everyone who thought terrorism was already illegal.

Whatever Happened To...?

Welcome to the annual
“Whatever Happened To...?” Awards for 2004,
in which I pick out a few news stories, individuals, phrases, etc. that were seen briefly, if you were alert enough (like Janet Jackson’s nipple), and then dropped out of sight with major questions still unanswered (unlike Janet Jackson’s nipple).

Let’s begin:

What was the US’s precise role in the Haitian coup in February? What did we know and when did we know it? Did we actually require Aristide to resign the presidency as a condition for saving his life?

In October 2003 the Toledo Blade ran a series about a US military unit that went on a mass killing spree in Vietnam in 1967. In February, the Pentagon announced it would investigate. So?

Before Yushchenko, there was President Chen of Taiwan, who during that country’s elections (March 2004), claimed to have been the victim of a weird assassination attempt, with homemade bullets, and no one was really sure what actually happened if anything, then nothing.

Abu Ghraib: Seymour Hersh and even Rumsfeld said that there was much worse to come in the way of photographs and film, so where is it? Rummy said (in May) that he would really love to release all the pictures, but the darned lawyers wouldn’t let him. Guess the lawyers still have him all tied up, metaphorically speaking, with a hood over his head, pointing at his genitals and laughing, metaphorically speaking (or not). Also, weren’t we supposed to have torn down Abu Ghraib by now?

The lists of casualties in Iraq issued by the Pentagon never include contractors, security guards, and mercenaries of all sorts. It continues to be the case that we rarely find out who any of these people (alive or dead) are, just where the US, Halliburton etc are recruiting these people who are then imported into Iraq, given guns and immunity from the local law, and turned loose. However in April there was this article about one who had been a death squad assassin for South Africa’s apartheid government.

May: the Sunday Times (London) reported that one of the intended 9/11 hijackers, Niaz Khan, had turned himself in to the FBI a year and a half before 9/11, was questioned and then let go. Silly me, I expected a shit-storm of vituperation and investigations. When an FBI person told the Independent, “Every effort was made,” I wrote, “Hopefully, that phrase will be very slowly, very firmly shoved up the FBI’s collective ass over the next few months.” Didn’t happen. The Sunday Times article is here; there are links to other articles here and here.

Friendly militias. In August, Paul Wolfowitz proposed to the House Armed Services Committee that the Pentagon build a “global anti-terrorist network of friendly militias,” death squads, warlords and the like. There were no angry editorials, denunciations by John Kerry, nothing, so in October they slipped it into a Pentagon authorization bill, and away we go.

September: Insurgents took over a school in Beslan, and Russia let loose a blizzard of lies that remain unresolved, even while Putin used the incident to tighten his authoritarian grip on all of Russia and eliminate democratic election of governors. Two reporters who might have negotiated with the rebels were, respectively, poisoned and arrested. Russia low-balled the number of hostages, then claimed with no proof that the rebels were Arab rather than Chechen, and kept their demands, which were related to Chechnya, out of the media, even while the authorities took hostages of their own, the families of Chechen rebel leaders.

September: did N Korea test a nuclear device, or what?

October: the Al Qaqaa Cock-Up. 380 tons of explosives were looted from a military base after US forces searched it, then left the doors unlocked.

October: bombed a wedding in Fallujah. Never admitted it was a wedding.

November: The Marine who shot the unarmed wounded prisoner in the mosque, was he ever, like, arrested, or given a stern talking to, or something?

November: Colombia claimed there was an attempt to assassinate Bush while he was in the country.

Did we ever find out who was responsible for the provision in the appropriations bill allowing committee chairs the right to look at anyone’s tax returns?

I’d like to give a special blogger’s fond farewell to two phrases that helped make 2004 so much fun: “weapons of mass destruction-related program activities” (from the State of the Union Address) and “member of the reality-based community.”


And then there are the people of 2004:

A.Q. Khan, we hardly knew ye.

That woman sterilized by Tom Coburn.

Vincent White. American adviser to the Afghan government, tossed in prison on trumped up sex charges when he interfered with corrupt contracts.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. At the beginning of the year we’d never heard of him, then he was the biggest terrorist ever, although the US seemed unsure even about the number of legs he possessed, then the US military razed a city to the ground for refusing to hand him over, before admitting he had probably left Fallujah before the bombing started, then evidently stopped caring where he was or what he was doing.

Also riding the roller coaster that is the American attention span: Achmed Chalabi, “hero in error”: he was under indictment for money laundering, then he wasn’t; he was America’s bestest bud, then Bush said he might have met him on a rope line one time; he was on the governing council, then it looked like they reduced the number of seats in the National Council just to get rid of him, then he showed up anyway, and now he’s reinvented himself as a Shiite anti-American, and no one’s even mentioning the whole spying-for-Iran thing anymore.

Chalabi’s nephew. The head of the war crimes trial of Saddam, then wanted for murder, now... still in exile, I think.

Iyad “Comical” Allawi, catapulted into power by the US without some basic questions about his past being answered. In London in the ‘70s, did he just spy on Iraqi exiles for Saddam, or did he kill them? I don’t know the answer, does George Bush? Does he care?

Mary Cheney. She’s still a lesbian, right?

Precision

A word about the latest US bombing of Fallujah: you don’t get to call it “precision bombing” unless you’re admitting that you intended to blow up that ambulance.

David Corn describes Colin Powell as “a boxer who has taken one too many dives.”

The World's Shortest Blog, which uses the same template I do, which is slightly disconcerting to me, offers a bounty to whoever publicly asks Chimpy how many times he’s been arrested.

I knew if I procrastinated long enough about doing the research to write again about Tom Coburn, R candidate for Senate in Oklahoma and loon, someone would do it for me. In addition to the homophobia (Bush appointed him to the AIDS commission), Schindler’s List, death penalty for abortion doctors and whatnot, Salon has discovered that he once sterilized a young woman without her consent, and illegally charged Medicare for the procedure.

Putin looks at Chechen insurrection and decides that the appropriate response is to destroy what little regional autonomy and democracy remains, and take more power into his own ice-cold hands. The 89 regional governors, currently elected, would be appointed, by him. And Duma elections would be entirely by proportional representation (currently it’s chosen half by PR, half by first-past-the-post), but with the same 7% threshold for a party to enter the Duma, making it in practice less democratic, and of course more pliable. Under Putin’s plan, voters would choose from among parties, not individual candidates, a system in place only in Israel and I think Japan (and remember that many Russian mafia types have bought their way onto party lists in order to get parliamentary immunity from prosecution). Putin is playing on a mythical conspiracy to break up Russia, the answer to which is “unity,” by which he means dictatorship. Or the terrorists win.

And he wants “a single organisation capable of not only dealing with terror attacks but also working to avert them, destroy criminals in their hideouts, and if necessary, abroad.” The Guardian suggests that this is a version of the American Department of Homeland Security; I’d suggest a comparison closer to home, f’r instance the KGB or the Okhranka.

All 9/11, All the Time

The Bush admin calls for a political settlement over Chechnya or, in other words, a more sensitive war on terrorism.

In a NYT story on how Congressional R’s plan to force a lot of votes on defense issues, Bill Frist’s spokesmodel says “It will be all 9/11, all the time.” A new slogan: “Vote Republican: All 9/11, All the Time.”

What's the Russian for tit for tat?

During the Beslan crisis, the LA Times reports, Russian troops took their own hostages, 40 or so relations--including children--of Chechen rebel leaders. The Russians claim that it was protective custody, because those leaders planned to kill their relatives and blame it on Russian security forces. It all makes sense now.

Let’s not feel too superior: the US has done exactly the same thing in Iraq (not sure about Afghanistan), including the wife of the Saddam Hussein aide who was just reported as captured, and then not captured. His wife was seized in December, and the stories I saw that mentioned that fact didn’t say if she was ever released. Does anyone know?

From the Ironic Times: “CORRECTION: Last week, due to a production error, we quoted President Bush describing his Iraq policy as a “successful catastrophe.” In fact, he described it as a “catastrophic success.” We apologize for any confusion this may have caused.”

Ugly processes which have their own logic

Press Association headline: “Bitterness Mounts in Russia.” This is news?

Putin, the Bitter-Guy-in-Chief, berates Western countries for calling Chechen rebels “rebels” rather than “terrorists.” Of course, when Russia was downplaying the Chechen uprising, it liked to call them “bandits.” He denied that there is any relationship between Russian policies in Chechnya and the Beslan incident. Well, except that the latter justifies the former: “Just imagine that people who shoot children in the back came to power anywhere on our planet. Just ask yourself that, and you will have no more questions about our policy in Chechnya.” So genocide doesn’t justify terrorism, but terrorism justifies genocide, is that right?

Asked about human rights violations by Russian forces in Chechnya, he said that the lower-level people responsible for them are always punished, but “Compare the torture of Iraqi prisoners. This hasn’t happened on the direction of the top US leaders, but because of how individual people behaved in these circumstances. Those who are to blame must be punished.” “In war there are ugly processes which have their own logic.”

The Russian media has begun to do its job, criticizing the government’s actions and analyzing its lies, and some, including the editor of Izvestia, have been fired for it. They’re asking where some of the dead bodies have disappeared to, saying that the rebels/terrorists/bandits/actress/models were in fact willing to negotiate, that no foreigners were present, and that the bloodbath was not caused by explosives going off but by locals with guns trying to prevent the school being stormed.

Putin refuses to hold a public inquiry.

Kerry says Iraq is “the wrong war, in the wrong place at the wrong time,” and he plans to pull out within four years of taking office. Five, tops. Six, at the outside....

A month after being charged with murder, Salem Chalabi has been removed as head of the Saddam Hussein tribunal.

Carefree Russians

If you’re looking for a voice on the web supportive of the Beslan kidnappers, this is probably the closest, at least in (broken) English: Kavkaz Center, evidently located in Turkey, a site supposedly close to the guy behind Beslan. It’s nutty, but oddly hard to refute. It’s focused on Putin personally as the enemy, but Putin indeed originally came to power on anti-Chechen rhetoric. The site points out that thousands of Chechen schoolchildren have been killed in the invasion of Chechnya, which explains, while of course not excusing, their inhumanity to the Beslan children. Would you care to explain to Chechens why this incident was so horrible but the world has largely ignored a decade of wholesale murder and rape by Russian troops in their country? The website is full of conspiracy theories, but Russia is, in fact, full of conspiracies and lies and unanswered questions about terrorist acts: the mysterious apartment bombings, the Moscow theater siege, etc.

2 reporters who have negotiated with Chechens in the past were prevented reaching Beslan. One may have been poisoned, the other was first stopped at the airport for suspicion of carrying explosives, then when he was released, 2 airport parking attendants came up to him and picked a fight, all 3 were arrested, and he was imprisoned for 5 days for “hooliganism,” not the first time he’s been seized while trying to cover Chechnya for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Russia is claiming that 10 of the rebels were from Arab countries, but this is almost certainly a fabrication. The implication isn’t that these Arabs are wandering jihadists, but mercenaries paid for by dark forces trying to dismember Russia. Putin’s speech to the nation yesterday thus made no mention of “Chechnya,” and it sounds from the WaPo like the Russian people still haven’t been told that the rebels’ demand was for an end to the war in Chechnya. Pay no attention to the genocide behind the curtain.

Putin told Russians that they can’t “live in as carefree a manner as before.” Yes...Russians...carefree. Beslan is being described as “Russia’s 9/11.” It’s certainly being used as an excuse for Putin to make his already authoritarian government authoritarianer, just as the Bushies used 9/11 to enact the FBI’s wish list in the Patriot Act, take out Saddam, and silence domestic critics.

Israel is trying to get the EU and other foreign donors to pay for an apartheid road system in the West Bank. Given the settlements and the Wall, Palestinians are banned from roads the settlers use, so Israel wants someone else to pay for separate but equal roads for Palestinians.

Some want to tear a juicy bit of flesh off us (Russia tastes just like chicken)

Subtle this ain’t: the Pentagon is going to investigate Kerry’s medals.

Nor this: Putin in his address to the nation: “Some want to tear a juicy bit of flesh off us ... others are helping them, assuming that Russia ... still represents a threat to them. And that the threat needs to be eliminated. Terrorism is an instrument for achieving these aims.” In other words, this has nothing to do with Chechen independence, but is part of a Sinister Plot to dismember Russia. Rather like pretending that Iraq was behind 9/11, but rather more nebulous. “The terrorists believe they are stronger than us, that they will intimidate us with their cruelty”. Funny, didn’t you try to intimidate Chechens with your cruelty?

It’s not clear whether they’ll lie about the number of dead hostages at Beslan. It won’t be as easy to get away with that as after the Moscow theater siege. But they are claiming to have killed all the hostage-takers, which is simply not true.

The civil trial in Fresno over the assassination of Archbishop Romero (which I discussed here has finished, with Alvaro Rafael Saravia, still a fugitive, ordered to pay $10 million.

We demonstrated our weakness

The print NYT has a somewhat unfortunate jump. Quoting Hillary Clinton: “‘My husband is doing very well,’ she said, noting that he had beaten her” (continued on page A13)

at cards.

By the way, did you know that Bill Clinton is younger than George Bush?

The people who took over the school in Beslan, North Ossetia, loaded with explosives, depriving little children of food and water and threatened them with 15 people being killed if they moved or cried, have obviously reached an unimaginable level of inhumanity. But... Bush said--I can’t find the exact quote, but it was on the BBC World News--something about the lengths “they” will go to attack civilization. A Chechen might ask, what civilization? Stalin forcibly removed the entire Chechen population, Yeltsin and Putin have waged wars of extermination and atrocity.

Putin, of course, takes from this incident the lesson that Russia has been too civilized towards Chechnya: “we failed to react to them adequately. We demonstrated our weakness, and the weak are beaten.” And he will go after those who “foment interethnic hatred.” Have you heard the way Russians speak about Chechens as a group? A combination of the way Hitler spoke about the Jews and Europeans still speak about the Roma.

In this incident, Russia exhibited an impressive level of incompetence, failing to do things as simple and obvious as securing the area and making sure there were ambulances. None of which is what Putin means by failing to react adequately.

"Only" the global war on terrorism?

Tom DeLay to the Republican Jewish Coalition: “My friends, there is no Palestinian-Israeli conflict. There is only the global war on terrorism.”

French Muslims have condemned the taking of hostages to force a reversal of the headscarf ban, but went too far in asking Muslim schoolgirls to adhere to the ban instead of resisting it, as had been planned before the hostage-taking (Thursday is the first day of school). If the state is right not to give up its (despicable) policies to appease the terrorists, neither should the other side give up their legitimate resistance. Yadda yadda yadda, or the terrorists win. It’s like a teenage girl dating that guy with the piercings and the motorcycle not because she likes him, but to piss off her parents. Speaking of teenage girls, it’s nice to see the French government taking on that dangerous segment of the population. And putting the burden of having to choose between their principles and their futures on teenage girls.

Similarly, Russia wants the UN to condemn terrorism by Chechens and declare it part of the world-wide war on terrorism, but doesn’t want the outside world to condemn its vicious and bloody crushing of the Chechen people and its imposition of a fake president through an even faker election. Well, fuck that.

Comical Allawi, and not for the first time, has unilaterally halted peace talks just at the point of agreement, this time in Sadr City. Sure, since he’s planning to fight using American troops. In fact, the sticking point on this one was whether American troops could conduct military operations in the Baghdad suburb without Allawi’s permission; Allawi wanted them to be able to kill Iraqis without his permission.

It looks like the charges against Achmed and Salem Chalabi will be dropped (some stories are saying that they have already been, but this is wrong).

Expressing themselves through violence and violent behaviour

NY protest sign: "What if Barbara or Jenna were impregnated by Willie Horton?”

I dislike seeing terms which should only be used to describe genuine elections being used for blatant shams, such as that in Chechnya today. General Alu Alkhanov was not “elected.” He did not “win” an election--the election was fixed, not won.

Then there’s Iraq’s Comical Allawi, quoted in the WaPo directing more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger tut-tutting towards the insurgents. “They are not knowing how to express themselves but through violence and through violent behavior,” says the man who was installed by the US military’s violence and violent behaviour. Allawi also likes to talk about the law and bringing people to justice, but the only law written in Iraq in decades was written by Saddam Hussein or Paul Bremer.

You kidnapped me and are threatening to kill me over WHAT??

A group called the Islamic Army in Iraq has kidnapped 2 French journalists, demanding the end of the headscarf ban in French public schools. Normally I’d say it’s bad policy to give in to kidnappers, but really, how’d you like to have to explain to someone’s family why they had to die to protect a ban on headscarves?

Incidentally, I don’t know how this fits in with Muslim theology, but if Muslim girls/women really want to protest the ban and really don’t want to show their hair in public...they should shave their heads.

British Tory party leader Michael Howard has been banned from the White House, for criticizing Tony Blair over the Iraq war.

One of the Chechen women suspected to have perpetrated one of the Russian plane bombings this week was the sister of a man seized by Russian forces several years ago, and never seen again. You don’t have to approve of blowing up planes to understand why she was pissed off.

The Bush admin response to data showing that charter schools are not the miracle cure they were supposed to be, and indeed under-perform regular public schools: stop collecting the data.

Although Sistani’s deal over Najaf involved the American troops leaving the city, they aren’t going to do it. "Owie" Allawi has given them permission to stay until it’s safe enough for Iraqi police to handle. Allawi is obviously trying to restore his authority, but doing so through treachery may not go over too well. Or who knows, maybe Iraqis like treachery. Meanwhile, US tanks will stay, parked among the ruins they created.