The Tom Ridge color of the day is silver: Keep watching the skies!

The FDA has decided to stop testing drugs for their safety for children, so doctors will have to go back to guessing. This one has Shrub’s smell all over it, since they prefer to bribe drug companies with longer patents if they do it than to require it.

The Tom Ridge Homeland Security Office (motto: Panicking the American People with Vague Warnings and Arbitrary Colors Since 2001) color of the day is grey: duck and cover!

For tomorrow, Tom Ridge’s color of the day is green: watch out for barfing Irishmen.

Bush on Zimbabwe elections: “The US will not recognize the outcome of the election because we think it’s flawed.” And he should know.

At the same press conference, he castigated Iraq for having weapons of mass destruction, and threatened it with nukes.

Elsewhere, Captain Hypocrite said “I understand that the unrest in the Middle East creates unrest throughout the region.” Quite.

In a remark characterized by the press as a severe criticism of Israel, Bush called Ariel Sharon an evil-doer. No, of course not, he said that his actions (massive military incursions, machine-gunning an Italian reporter, etc etc) were “not helpful.”

In a measure virtually unreported, the House, instead of attempting again to outlaw late-term abortions, voted to define an aborted fetus with a heartbeat or a breath as a person, in the “Born-Alive Infants Protection Act.”

I believe Tom Ridge’s color for the day is still yellow. After the announcement of the color-coding scheme on Tuesday, Chris and I did our part in being alert at a yellow level by carefully searching the Atlantic Casino for Osama bin Laden. He wasn’t there. Jon Stewart suggested that the new system allows one to coordinate the color of one’s clothes with one’s level of panic.

According to the OAU and South African observers, the Zimbabwean elections were perfectly ok. I don’t know if this is better or worse, but the reason for this may be less about what constitutes a fair election than South Africa not wanting to see a civil war that it might have to intervene in when Mugabe refused to give up office peacefully. One problem is that Mugabe might really have won a fair election, not that we’ll ever know.

A German art historian claims to know who the Mona Lisa really was.

Rumor is, Tipper Gore is planning to run for the Senate.

In Saudi Arabia, the religious police beat some girl students for not wearing properly modest garb, and force them back into their school. It was on fire at the time. 15 die.

Missed the big Paula Jones/Tonya Harding fight. I understand that Amy Fischer was originally supposed to participate, but wasn’t allowed to by her parole board. The NY Times commented that this just shows that all celebrities should have parole boards.

Yes, that’s what Yugoslavia really needed: a new name.

The Tom Ridge color of the day is purple: be afraid, be very afraid.

Or the terrorists win.

Yesterday was the six month anniversary of 9/11. Since 1970 I’ve been trying to convince people to celebrate my half birthday as well as my actual birthday, but nope, didn’t get cards, didn’t get presents, didn’t get articles in the NY Times on how the world has changed since my advent...

To commemorate, Chris (who was visiting from Vermont) and I went to Reno. Because if we don’t lose at nickel slots, ogle cocktail waitresses, and pig out at buffets, the terrorists win.

Not too much to report. Saw a place called Nu Yalk Pizza. We also saw a sign for a “Speakeasy Casino,” although as we got closer we could see that the Casino part was less illuminated. It seems to be a decommissioned casino bought by Ramada. When we went inside, there was nothing casino-like, just some pool tables, and someone immediately told us “No casino.” Only a couple of minutes after we left did I realize that that was just what they *wanted* us to think, and that if I’d known the right password, the pool tables would have rotated into the floor and the real secret casino revealed. If that isn’t true, it should be. And the password should be “swordfish” (from the Marx Brothers movie Horsefeathers).

We saw the most pathetic-looking liquor store slash wedding chapel, although we did not go inside. I thought about asking if they did gay weddings.

Of course Chris is already married. As we passed a pawn shop and were looking at the stuff in the windows, I suggested that he buy a really cheap ring, say under $10, replace his wedding ring with it when he went home, and, first, see how long it took for Suzanne to notice, and then tell her that he’d had to hock it in Reno ‘cause the slot machine was about to pay off big, he knew it, and that the new ring was nice and cheap because the previous owner was a jumper. Chris thought not. Wimp.

It’s been maybe 9 years since I’ve set foot in Nevada, and the technology has upgraded, but not in a good way. For a start, a lot of them have themes. Instead of matching up bars or 7's or fruit, there are cartoon sheep and fish and The Munsters, and I was shocked, shocked to see a slot machine with a Casablanca theme. At the nickel machines this is one thing, but you really have to wonder about the people betting a dollar at a time at slot machines with a Mummy or I Dream of Jeannie theme. While there were always machines that imitated poker, now there are ones that replicate Monopoly or, believe it or not, Scrabble.

These new slot machines are all computers, with no moving parts to spin around, all virtual, and most of them don’t even have levers to pull to get them going, just buttons, to facilitate faster money loss. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but this is just wrong. I think you need to put the money in the slot yourself and pull on a lever. For a start, it’s aerobic, and you need that after the all-you-can-eat buffet. But really, it’s a question of work ethic. You need to pull the lever to feel you’ve actually earned the right to lose that nickel. I’m telling you, these gamblers today, they’re just plain lazy with their player’s cards and their fancy-schmantzy video screens, why in my day we had a sense of tradition, of accomplishment, I’m telling you...

I’m going to lie down now.

In a piece of irony, the BMW design center in Munich had to be evacuated this week when a World War II unexploded bomb was discovered. The bomb had been manufactured in a Rover plant in Oxfordshire, which is now owned by BMW.

An Italian bishop in Tuscany rented out his seminary to the last-ditch Mussolini government as a concentration camp for Jews. And he didn’t even get paid, amazingly enough asking the post-war government for his money. He didn’t get it.

What to say about Bush’s contingency plans to use nukes on any country on his increasingly long enemies list? One can but hope that Congress will do something about preventing him developing battlefield nukes.

This is Bush, the man who recently at a concert tried to wave at Stevie Wonder.

I didn’t make that up.

A blood-buying scheme in China, in which plasma was reinjected into donors, presumably so they could take out more blood (?), but in which the idiots mixed up all the plasma together, has turned Henan province into one big AIDS hospice, with 100,000-500,000 infected. Some of whom have made their way to larger cities and are stabbing people with syringes. The government is covering this story up, of course, but the cities are in a panic.

Ashcroft wants to form neighborhood watch groups to fight terrorism. That’s too silly even to make a joke about.

The Israelis, meanwhile, are passing out guns to everyone, including schoolteachers. Ariel Sharon said, in case you missed it, “If the Palestinians are not being beaten, there will be no negotiations. ... Only after they’ve been battered will we be able to conduct talks.” And then he bombed a school for blind children.

Bush slogan: “A quality teacher in every classroom.”

The Whitewater investigation is over, if anyone cares, Robert (you can call me Ray) Ray’s final report says he could certainly have convicted Clinton if he felt like it. Well that was certainly worth $70 million, or whatever the final figure was (no reporter saw fit to ask).

I understand that some of the Afghans rushing in to support US troops are being paid, that is as mercenaries, by the US.

In yet another creepy story about twins, two 70-year old Finn twins are killed by being hit while driving bicycles on the same day.

Indian bookies have been spreading rumors to promote further violence. They are currently offering between 4:1 and 6:1 that inter-communal violence will spread to Rajasthan.

When the US started rounding up furriners after 9/11, you may remember some very brief mentions of the fact that a bunch of them were Israelis. So what happened to them? I don’t actually know, and have seen only one story in the middling-reliable Daily Telegraph, which suggests that a couple hundred of them were actually spies, possibly shadowing Muslim militants in this country, without the knowledge of the US government. At the very least, a suspiciously large number of them have backgrounds in military intelligence. So why were they arrested in the first place: I think they were pretending to be Arabs.

Although I often say that the real news about how the world works is hidden away in the business pages, I don’t always take my own advice, and missed an interesting issue. A passing reference in the New Statesman sent me to the Web, to look up the Carlyle Group. In retrospect I remember one minor aspect, that there was this major but secretive military company (technically it’s an investment group, and is now somewhat diversified, but it specializes in gentrifying dilapidated defense contractors) in which the bin Laden family was an investor until last Oct. 27, and which employs George Bush the Elder. Carlyle is very hooked up, its chair being Reagan’s defense secretary & ex-head (assistant DCI? I forget) of the CIA Frank Carlucci, who was Donald Rumsfeld’s wrestling partner at Princeton (ie, look for Rumsfeld to join the board when he moves out of government), and others working for it include James Baker and John Major. There’s a self-propelled howitzer project even the Pentagon says is outmoded and it doesn’t need, which was due to be killed by the Clintonites and mysteriously revived by the Bushies. There are issues of Carlyle’s investments in South Korea, possibly responsible for Bush’s u-turn re North Korea after a call from his father. Shrub himself worked for the company before he became governor and, after he appointed a few members to the board of the Texas teachers’ pension fund, $100m of public money was invested in Carlyle. The real problem is the connection with Saudi Arabia, perhaps explaining the administration’s complete inability to criticize the Saudis for anything (his father is over there a lot trying to sell them stuff--Carlyle is responsible for training the guards for the royal family--and gets a lot of money for it). No wonder we’ve heard so little from Bush Senior, he’s out making money, something like $50m, and $100,000 every time he opens his mouth for the company, and no one is screaming conflict of interest.

Speaking of which, Neil Bush is also in Saudi Arabia (I sent something from a Saudi paper a while back), this time promoting educational software. There was an article in the NY Times this week. He thinks it has nothing to do with who all his relatives are; he thinks he’s just a great salesman.

The Guardian reports that when the US blamed the French for the failed attempt to capture Karadizc in leaks to the press, they had absolutely no basis for it.

Advice to Tonya Harding: go for the nose.

How to fry an egg on your computer.

The last Irish World War One veteran has died.

Tony Blair today was talking about the consequences “if” the Zimbabwean elections were unfair. I just want to point out the incredible hypocrisy of that “if.” The elections can be pronounced unfair now, no one needs to wait for the result. Violence and intimidation have been rampant, normal election activities by the opposition have been banned, voting lists have been blatantly rigged, military and police officers ordered to get absentee ballots and vote in front of their commanders, and I could go on and on. Still, by that “if,” Blair was leaving the door open for recognizing a government if the opposition somehow miraculously won despite everything. But such a victory would not make the election fair, or democratic. It would just indicate that people were sick of Mugabe. They could hardly have any idea what the opposition’s policies are, given the absence of election meetings or uncontrolled media. *I* don’t know what those policies might be. That “if” encapsulates and encompasses all the hypocrisy of the West towards the democratic process in the underdeveloped countries.

There’s another interesting piece in the Guardian on racial profiling by the US in immigration and other matters, including noting that an April 2001 report by the anti-terrorism czar focused exclusively on acts of terror against Americans and other white people, like saying that the most significant event in Angola was the kidnapping of 3 Portuguese oil company workers, while ignoring killings of hundreds of black Angolans, etc. You
can read it at www.guardian.co.uk/columnists.

Turkey has been arresting Kurds for giving their children Kurdish names. It also just banned a film that was its entry for Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.

Californians should all go out and vote. And remember, if they have a lot of commercials and lawn signs (which you never see on people’s actual lawns anymore), they must be wise, honest, brave, forthright champions of justice and true statesmen.

Right now I’m listening to the election debates on cable access; a little while ago I heard the sheriff debate, which evidently hinges on whether deputies have to wear baseball caps. No debates for judges, although there’s at least one I’d like to see asked to spell the word “juvinile” (as it appears in his mailer).

The statements in the voters’ pamphlet are fun, especially the
Libertarians. The gubernatorial candidate is a “practicing Druid
Unitarian,” and the lite governor candidate is campaigning on a platform of legalizing ferrets.

US troops who failed to capture Karadzic are putting it about that the operation was betrayed by some local mole. Actually, and this didn’t make the NY Times today, it was because the idiots cut phone lines, cell phones & all other forms of communication, many hours before the attack commenced, which might just have been a tip-off.

Senator Barbara Mikulski is quoted in the NY Times as saying “Mammograms should not be equated with nose jobs.” Damn, have I been doing that again? Well, I don’t get out that much.

Iowa declared English its official language today, just as Bush came to the state. Think they were trying to tell him something?

Daily Variety lists under Film Reviews today, “Cinderella II: Dreams Come True, Sex With Strangers.” That turned out to be two different movies, much to my disappointment.

The Duke of Edinburgh (the Queen’s husband, aka, the Duke of Hazard), displayed his usual cultural sensitivity today in Australia, asking the head of an aboriginal cultural center if they still throw spears at each other.

The chancellor of Germany is suing a news agency for suggesting that his hair color is not natural.

The LA Times says that in many parts of California, esp LA, there are no polling places and mail-in balloting is mandatory. This must stop.

Bush says that there has been a shadow government in place since September 11. The cynics amongst you will already have noticed that he didn’t say of what year.

Website: www.somethingawful.com/features/childrensbooks/index-07.htm

Another week, another country Bush is sending troops to, in this case the-former-soviet-republic-of-Georgia, and how tired they must be of that name. Beyond the fact that it is a barely existing country which, the London Times foreign editor writes, the US persists in seeing the best in, in spite of all the evidence. This war is now following the Chevron trail, that is its route seems mysteriously to be shadowing the planned oil pipeline between the Caspian and Turkey. I’m sure that’s a coincidence.

Some Berkeley frat members were just arrested for kidnapping a goat. (Is that a pun? It wasn’t intentional, unlike a letter Spike Milligan once wrote to the Telegraph, which had reported the escape of a snow leopard from a zoo and said it hadn’t been spotted yet. Spike pointed out that leopards are always spotted).

In the kettle calling the pot black stakes today, it’s a toss-up between the US criticizing the war crimes tribunals as too politicized (as opposed to Camp X-Rated), and Trent Lott calling Tom Daschle divisive.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, whose ability to enunciate clearly despite the large number of feet in his mouth at any given time is an example to us all, today both blamed Clinton for the violence in the Middle East, and said that Pakistan existed in 1931. He is the perfect spokesman, standing in exactly for Shrub’s stupidity.

Police in Britain have surprisingly enough decided not to prosecute Prince Harry for drug use.

Speaking of the royals, a DJ said of the Queen Mum, She smells of wee but we love her.

The Israelis go on a rampage through the world’s largest refugee camp, aka the Gaza strip, although this week it looks like small potatoes compared to the violence in India. I suppose it doesn’t matter who started this, but it’s rather suspicious that the BJP just lost state elections, look like losing the next national ones, and suddenly Hindu nationalists are trying again to build a temple at Ayodhya.

It seems that the Cuban Missile Crisis did not mark the first Soviet attempt to base missiles outside the USSR. 3 years earlier, rockets were sited in East Germany, aimed at Britain, France and, amazingly enough, Bonn.

Spiked

Spike Milligan has died at 83, the last Goon. Ying tong iddle i po, laddy, ying tong iddle i po.

Rummy Rumsfeld admits there isn’t enough evidence to charge anyone held at Stalag X-Ray, but doesn’t see why that should stop him detaining them indefinitely.

It’s spring and the political commercials are in the air. Bill Jones, or is it Bill Simon, attacks Riordan for not being Republican enough (just about the only ad to mention political party, even though these are primary elections), and says his (Jones or Simons’) heroes are Reagan, Bush (he doesn’t say which one) and Guiliani--who has over the years also been attacked for not being Republican enough. Someone, I think running for Controller, talks about having experience in business, academia and government. Just can’t hold a job. Most interestingly, Riordan is attacking Simon for not having voted all that often. What’s interesting there is that Simon has never held a government job of any sort, but Riordan doesn’t call him unqualified for that, just for not voting.

I’ve talked about Charles Pickering, Bush’s awful nominee for the 5th Circuit. Incidentally, I did a quickie research job last week and failed to figure out what he testified to in that Klan trial in 1967. Well his son, Chip Pickering, a sitting Congresscritter for Mississippi, just had his district hand-tailored for him by an all-Republican panel of the 5th Circuit, and the appeal of his opponent, another incumbent, one Ronnie Snows, was turned down by Pickering’s friend, Fat Tony Scalia. This after the Justice Dept delayed issuing the legally mandated preclearance for the redistricting in order to hand the job over to the court. This one smells rather bad.

In China, Shrub called for freedom and religious tolerance. The official Chinese transcript edited those parts out. So that would be a no then.

Israeli settlers are taking to detering suicide bombers by defiling their bodies with pigskin and lard.

Evidently the Bush admin has just dumped a 1978 pledge not to use nuclear weapons on non-nuclear states. Didn’t know about this? I only did because a satire website had a link to the for god’s sake Washington Times story reporting this.

For a rather funny obituary of Robin Williams’s recent godawful career, see this.

The Christian Guide to Small Arms, I swear to god.

A site featuring the Kama Sutra as illustrated by Star Wars toys.

Jonas Savimbi is dead. Ding dong, the motherfucker is dead.

Gary Condit says that the only way to ensure proper pressure on the police to solve the Chandra Levy disappearance is to re-elect Gary Condit.

Danny Pearl’s icky murder puts some interesting pressure on Pakistan, which is resisting extraditing those it now has in custody who are connected with it, because they can tell so much about Pakistani intelligence’s connections with that sort of thing. Pakistan, meanwhile, is trying to figure out how to blame India.

The Washington Post points out what I said a couple of months ago, that the US doesn’t now have enough missiles to go to war with Iraq, and won’t for many months. I’m going to make a wild guess that inventories will be back up by around, oh, one month before the November elections.

I’ll make another prediction: there will be a change in leadership in Venezuela by the end of the year. The US might actually invade, but more probably will buy itself a coup.

I know we’re a bit spoiled for choice of Darth Vaders at the moment, but someone might pay some attention to Libya, which has been becoming internationally active again, including in Colombia and in Zimbabwe, where Mugabe just pawned much of the public sector to it in exchange for military supplies so it can beat up opponents and election observers. Speaking of which, the South African election monitors (almost all that’s left after the Europeans were expelled) have refused to admit that it was the government’s stooges who attacked their people yesterday. South Africa wants regional influence, but it isn’t supporting democracy. Rather disappointing, really.

No wonder

There’s a phenomenon with George Bush, where I know that something he’s said is awful but it takes me a couple of days to figure out why. This week in South Korea he commented that in the peace museum in NK was exhibited an ax used to kill 2 American soldiers. “No wonder I think they’re evil,” he said.

I knew there was a problem with that “no wonder,” but wasn’t immediately sure what.

The thing about Bush that I’ve pointed out before is that his stated reasons for supporting a policy or belief are varied--tax cuts because the economy is good, because the economy is bad, because of the California energy crisis, etc etc--almost at random; they are there only to sell the policy. Bush believes what he believes and doesn’t care what he has to say in support of it. I think he’s actually a little contemptuous of people who have to have evidence and logic to support their beliefs; for real men, beliefs derive from their “character.” So the phrase “No wonder I think they’re evil” actually puts the evidence after the belief: I already think they’re evil, but I’ve just now heard why I think they’re that.

Speaking of putting the cart before the horse, enough already, Gray Davis, with the anti-Riordan commercials. We haven’t had the fucking primary yet. This is not about Davis, not having any real primary challenge, getting a jump on the general elections, this is Davis intervening in the Republican primary to weaken his strongest opponent there, in the hope of being able to run against Bill Simon. The man helped wreck the open primary on the grounds that political parties are private entities; so stay the hell out of the Republican primary. Also, with all those ads up here blaming Riordan for the electricity crisis (!), I must remember to ask my mother what he’s saying in LA.

Two black-footed penguins in Coney Island have turned out to be gay (evidently it isn’t that easy to figure out the sex of penguins, so it took the aquarium keepers a while to catch on, and then they had to do blood tests). But then, their names are Wendell and Cass, so come on.

Good article in Wednesday Washington Post on those anti-abortion centers. Also, I knew that 4 states had “Choose Life” license plates, but I didn’t know that Louisiana’s had a picture of a stork carrying a baby.

Rummy Rumsfeld denies that the new Pentagon propaganda unit will actually lie, leaving unanswered (but also unasked, except by me) the question of what an organization aimed at influencing the opinions of foreigners is doing in the Department of Defense to begin with.

The chief justice of Alabama’s Supreme Court wrote in an opinion last week that homosexuality is “abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature and a violation of the laws of nature and of nature’s God.” and homosexuals were presumptively unfit to have custody of children. Who new that a man elected because he posted the 10 Commandments illegally in his courtroom would turn out to be a jerk?

Shrub was in South Korea today, I believe to tell the North Koreans to tear down this wall. He gave a speech wearing a camoflage jacket over his suit. For once, it was actually a perfect disguise, because behind him was a solid wall of military people wearing camoflage jackets, so his actually blended in and you just saw his blue tie bobbing up and down. It was kind of hypnotic.

That British civil servant who put the naked picture on the internet evidently doesn’t really want him to marry her, it was some sort of practical joke.

Going to strip clubs for fun and class credit

The Bush administration plans to spend $100 million per year to promote marriage among the poor. Presumably this will come out of all the job training programs that have been axed. I trust no cynic out there is thinking that this exists solely in order to trick people into screwing up their eligibility for welfare.

One plan they could adopt was that put into practice by a British civil servant trying to get her boyfriend, another civil servant, to propose to her. She put his naked picture online and said it wouldn’t come off until he proposed. He doesn’t seem to have, but she did crash her server and got booted.

The war in Afghanistan just mysteriously expanded, with the US now bombing tribal forces opposed to the puppet government, but in no wise connected with the Taliban or Al Qaeda.

Attorney-and-Witchfinder General John Aschcroft, speaking to religious broadcasters, said that this is not a religious war, except for God being on our side. “Civilized people--Muslims, Christians and Jews--all undertand that the source of freedom and human dignity is the Creator.” Not being a civilized person, I can respond to that only in a series of grunts and bellows.

Following is from the Daily Cal. Comments seriatim, in brackets.

Male Sexuality Class Put on Hold Amid National Media Attention
Questionable Group Activities Cited as Cause
By STEVE SEXTON
Tuesday, February 19, 2002

The UC Berkeley male sexuality class that came under fire last week has been suspended by administrators while an investigation into reports of illicit class activities is conducted.

The class’s female counterpart is also under review, but has not been suspended, officials said.

A meeting between the instructors of the student-run classes took place Friday, following an inquiry into the classes by The Daily Californian. But when instructors of the male sexuality class failed to show up, the class was pulled, said George Breslauer, dean of social sciences at UC Berkeley. [Unfortunately, the class rather got off on being pulled.]

Students and instructors of the class told the Daily Cal they took trips to strip clubs and “sex exchanges” and watched an instructor strip. Some also said a party at an instructor’s house included group sex and a “party game” that had students photographing their genitalia and then trying to match the pictures to the correct body. [Pin the tail on the donkey for the frat crowd. Isn’t it weird that the article doesn’t specify that these were gay strip clubs? And the instructor stripped at a strip club--and did rather more than that. Somebody has removed all the homosexual content from this article.]

Those activities came as a surprise to the professor charged with overseeing the course, Caren Kaplan, chair of the women’s studies department. She told the Daily Cal she does not “police the content.” [Although the students did keep asking her to dress up in a policewoman’s uniform.]

But now she is heading the investigation into the reports, which have attracted national media attention, said Breslauer.

Under the policies guiding the classes, dubbed “DE-Cals” for Democratic Education at Cal, the sponsoring professor must sign off on the curriculum and then is “responsible for the content” of the class.

A second system of checks is intended, requiring the head of the sponsoring department to agree “that the course is an appropriate one for his or her department.”

But since Kaplan is both the sponsoring professor and the chair of the department, no secondary approval was needed.

She could not be reached for comment over the weekend.

Breslauer, her immediate supervisor, said it was “too premature” to make a determination of wrongdoing on Kaplan’s part. [I know this is sadly pedantic of me, but I’m torn between making an obvious joke based on the word premature or pointing out that “too premature” is a faulty usage.]

He said DE-Cal classes are “run with very little faculty oversight,” and added, “That will probably change.” [As soon as they hear about the strip clubs.]

The DE-Cal program is currently offering more than 100 courses, the topics of which range from the history of Afghanistan to counting cards in blackjack. The classes are not funded by the university, but are provided use of campus facilities and count for between 1-2 units toward graduation.

The program is regarded as a triumph for liberal, democratic education. But some fear that the activities in the male sexuality class have endangered the entire program.

Aside from indicating more supervision may be on the horizon, administrators have not said there will be drastic changes to the program.

Instructors of the female sexuality class have already begun to
distance themselves from their male counterpart. [Which hasn’t noticed and is lying back smoking a cigarette.]

“The male and female sexuality classes are two separate classes and are in no way affiliated,” said Kim Brodsky, an instructor of a female sexuality class. “We support and defend the curriculum of our course as educational and empowering, and we are looking forward to teaching this class for years to come.” [Would a joke based on “to come” be too crude?]

Instructors of the 2-unit male sexuality class [although it likes to brag that it has 8 units] likewise defended their curriculum. Drew Navarro, one instructor, said the classes “provide a much-needed forum” for discussion “of how students really feel about themselves and their bodies and others.”

The course description on the DE-Cal Web site says the class is
“intended to provide a safe environment in which men may learn about their own bodies and male sexuality. This course aims to create a greater community of men and women who are empathetic, understanding and supportive of each other’s sexuality.”

Some students enrolled in the male sexuality class are now searching for other classes to get their course load above their colleges’ minimum unit requirement for full-time student designation--typically 11-13 units.

“Current students are paying the price for alleged wrongdoings last semester,” Breslauer said.

I trust everyone had a happy Displaced Apostrophe Weekend (aka Presidents’ Day, President’s Day, Presidents Day, Presiden’t’s’ Day...).

British Marines accidentally invaded Spain today. They thought it was Gibraltar.

Shrub is on walkabout in Japan. He praised the Japanese prime minister for having nice hair and accidentally sent the Japanese stock market into a tailspin by using the word devaluation in a speech instead of the word deflation. Oops.

There is a new policy whereby the US might intervene militarily any time an American is taken hostage anywhere in the world. Because there were still some countries left we hadn’t threatened to go to war with.

Fake indicator of the week: greenhouse gas intensity, which is the number that the Bush environmental policy is meant to reduce. It means the amount of greenhouse gases divided by GDP. The upshot is that Bush is proposing to reduce greenhouse emissions less than would happen naturally, and without actually reducing them.

Spreading around the embarrassment, British paratroops open fire in Afghanistan on a cab taking a pregnant woman to the hospital. Take that, unborn terrorist!

2 F16s were sent to escort a plane with a couple of passengers behaving suspiciously by going to the bathroom too often. Mile-high club.

The British High Court rules that prostitutes employed in brothels do not have an obligation of confidentiality.

A guy is being tried for shooting his girlfriend for saying the words New Jersey. He is a nutter and certain words set him off, including Snickers and Wisconisin. At his trial, witnesses had to use flash cards for the dangerous words.

A Pentagon agency for surveillance, computer technology and general Big Brother-ry is to be headed by convicted Iran Contrateer John Poindexter. Takes you back, doesn’t it? And isn’t it amazing how the similarly undisgraced Eliot Abrams, the smuggest man in the Reagan administration, has managed to remain so quiet since rejoining government?

Princess Margaret died, and the nation went into a deep state of indifference. One letter to the paper asked "May I be the first to forget where I was when I heard the news. "

Favorite headline: Dinosaur Hunters Find Vomit. Evidently it’s the oldest fossilized vomit ever found, and they’re a little bit more excited by that than they probably should be.

A man in Ohio who called a cop a “pig” was ordered by a judge to stand in a public place with a sow for two hours while people jeered at him.

Heinz is going to bring out chocolate flavored french fries, which they describe as being for the kid with a sweet tooth who’s going to have his first coronary at 29. All right, they thought better about the 2nd half of that, just as they thought better of the idea of Froot Loops-flavored french fries.

Bush put his gubernatorial records in his father’s presidential library, and has since pretended that Texas’s surprisingly good Public Records Act no longer applies to them. I assume this story came out because reporters were looking for Enron connections and found that they’d get their info not in 10 days as the law requires, but whenever the library feels like it.

The county in which Dayton, Tennessee, the town of the Scopes Monkey Trial, has been ordered to stop holding bible classes in elementary schools, which they’ve evidently been doing for 52 years.

I keep reading that Charles Pickering testified against KKK leader Samuel Bowers in the 1960s, but the reporters are all too lazy to look up what he testified to. Does anyone know? A Google search didn’t help.

Speaking of lazy reporters, a story just broke--except in the sense of having been broadcast on radio 3 months ago--that Attorney Gen Ashcroft said that the difference between Islam and Christianity is that in the former fathers send their sons to their death while in the latter God sent his son to his death, or something like that.

Incidentally, when did George Bush start fund-raising again?

Speaking of hateful statements, I was flipping channels yesterday and watched some tv evangelist I’d never seen before. He said that California schools now require students to take 3 weeks of Islamic studies, or some such, in which they must pick a Muslim name and design their own jihad (the televangelist pronounced it jahid). Did you know that? He also commented on limitations of women in Islamic countries, and then made a 1950s type joke about how banning women drivers might not be that bad.

TV Guide description of a program next week: Glutton Bowl: The World’s Greatest Eating Competition. Qualifying rounds in speed and quantity include bowls of mayonaise, beef tongue and sticks of butter, with a surprise “delicacy” in the finals. 2 hours. Fox, if you needed to ask.

OK, fine, Kevin, O’Neil didn’t *literally* call Byrd a Klansman, but we all knew what he meant. Far be it for me to claim the moral high ground of living in a literalist’s ditch, or something.

The US military’s Oops List continues to grow. An attack by a drone Wednesday killed 6 nomads looking for metal to salvage in a long-abandoned and bombed Taliban hq. As Jon Stewart said about the last such screw-up, Operation Shoot First was a complete success, but Operation Ask Questions Later is still on-going.

Bush: “I’m deeply concerned about the plight of the average Palestinian, the moms and dads who are trying to raise their children, to educate their children.” Dubya’s deep understanding of the complexities of other cultures is an example to social anthropologists everywhere.

If you liked those commercials for whatever company that was featuring the image of Martin Luther King Jr (registered trade mark), you’ll love the upcoming marketing of Mohandas K. Gandhi (registered trade mark), whose great grandson just signed up with the same company responsible for marketing the name and image of James Dean and Marilyn Monroe.

I once mentioned Polygamy Porter. Thanks to the continuing quest of British reporters for alcohol in the Land of Osmond, I now know its motto: Why have just one?

The University of Georgia has switched its heating system from coal to chicken fat. There’s a good joke in there, but I can’t quite come up with it. Answers on a postcard, please.

Under the headline “Nice Humps,” the Daily Telegraph reports on a beauty contest for camels in the United Arab Emirates. Do you think they have to sleep with the judges? Anyway, the prize is £20,000.

NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof says that the so-called terrorists which US “advisers” are in the Philippines to fight, or at least to patrol nowhere near them, are actually a rapidly declining tiny band of criminals in the kidnap-for-ransom business. But the Philippines government, by portraying them as Osama mini-me’s, has managed to acquire an extra $100 million in military aid. Which should buy someone a lot of shoeware.

The queen marked her 50th anniversary as queen yesterday by opening a cancer ward, symbolic of her family being a cancer on the body politic, I’m assuming.

The EU establishes an arrest warrant across the EU covering 32 crimes, including some that are not crimes in every EU country, like racism and xenophobia, and after voting down habeas corpus & speedy trial safeguards.

The US admits that its most recent botched raid in Afghanistan was a botched raid and releases 27 prisoners, although it may have released them to the puppet regime....

The US has paid at least 35 Afghan warlords $200,000 each. I believe at the current exchange rate, that equals about 3 weeks of undying loyalty.

The justification of the US’s participation in the civil war in Colombia has officially been expanded from drugs to terrorism this week, without any debate or indeed notice in this country. Hell, the CIA director’s testimony to Congress yesterday was the first time he’d been seen in the 5 months since 9/11, which should give you some clue to the thoroughness of Congressional oversight, although they will haul every single Enron executive up to make them recite the 5th amendment.

Even that wasn’t as edifying as today’s re-enactment of the Monty Python 4 Yorkshiremen sketch, with Robert Byrd & Paul O’Neil bragging about their crappy childhoods. Said O’Neil: “I won’t cede to you the high moral ground of not knowing what life is like in a ditch.” Heaven forfend. He also called Byrd a Klansman.

Speaking of high moral ground, during WW II Chaim Weizmann offered the British use of Palestine as a site to develop mustard gas.

I hope the report in the Post is incomplete on the hearings into Bush nominee to the 5th Circuit Charles Pickering, since it seems they skipped over a good deal of his racist past (which you can look up yourself, I have a headache.)

Quote unquote

Lots of government types saying stupid things:

Antonin Scalia stands up to the Catholic church, says it is wrong on the death penalty, and any Catholic judge who doesn’t believe in the death penalty should resign. Doesn’t mention abortion. And doesn’t mention the difference between a principle derived from religion and one derived from any other form of morality.

The budget director Mitchell Daniels says NY’s fight for federal aid is “a little money-grubbing game.” And if there’s any justice, he just lost--his job. There is, of course, no justice. He says the comment was misconstrued. Bush promised NY $20 billion, and where is it in the budget? Nowhere. They’re even trying to count the money to families of victims, although that one is unlikely to fly.

Fritz Hollings attacks the administration’s dealings with Enron, saying its $3,500 to himself were so small as not to be a contribution but an insult. Right, like when the service in a restaurant is so bad that you only leave a $3,500 tip.

I should have made it clear that the policies I was talking about were associated with Israel’s current fascist minister of tourism, not just the assassinated fascist minister of tourism.

A British education authority has lost a court case and will have to pay a student whose dyslexia they failed to diagnose £52,500.

What, I should make a tasteless joke about that story, like you didn’t all think the same thing and you should be ashamed of yourselves.

During the Super Bowl--or so I’ve heard, if I want to watch people attempting to injure each other for no good cause I’ll watch CNN or the Cartoon Network--the government unveiled its new anti-drug ads, at the cost of $35 million that might have been spent on treatment, which evidently blame drug users for financing terrorism by their habits. One might think that since this will not convince a single addict to mend their ways, it was actually intended to make everyone else more contemptuous of drug users.

If you think the “axis of evil” didn’t play well in Europe--Germany for some reason is especially pissed--how about those images of a wounded POW at Camp X-Files being transported to his interrogation session shackled to a stretcher.

New words for old / Dubya is Kenny Boy Law / Going out on a limb for Israel

Paris sets standards for garret apartments, which is the end of the romance of Paris as we have known it. Balzac, La Boheme, starving artists, gone gone gone. The regs will ban apartments with sloping ceilings and require a minimum size and height, heat and hot & cold running water (like any Parisian needs water for any purpose!).

The line “Let’s roll,” that Bush just used again, which I made fun of the first time he appropriated it as suggesting a 1970s cop show, the family of the hijackee who used it wants to trademark it.

The youngest survivor of the Titanic just had her 90th birthday. She says it didn’t really affect her, she prefers to look to the future...

Anti-abortionites want to use federal money to provide those anti-abortion clinics (see under “abortion alternatives” in your phone book--they are no longer allowed to fly under false flags) with ultrasound machines, not for health of course, but for emotional blackmail purposes.

Bush keeps a scorecard of Al Qaeda in his desk and crosses off the dead ones. Isn’t that special.

Remember the Israeli tourism minister who was assassinated? Ever wonder what sort of damage a right-wing loon can do in a job like that? Evidently they’re advertising suggesting that people go to (illegal) settlements on the Gaza strip--to work on their tans. Ads in this country (which I have not seen), say “Go out on a limb for Israel” next to a picture of a water skier. Of course environmental destinations or christian sites get nothing to promote themselves.

Spain gets its first gay priest. This should be fun to watch. A parishoner is quoted as saying that they wondered when he got the earring, but when he dyed his hair blonde, they knew something was up.

Hamas is now swamped by resumes. Since they decided to allow women to be bombers, it has been deluged by applications.

The woman bomber this week belonged to an organization that has been targeted by the Israeli military for some time: not Hamas, but the Red Crescent. She was an ambulance driver, and the army has managed to shoot a great many of those in recent months.

Afghan Interim Puppet in Chief Karzai has responded to the fight between 2 warlords by sending in a delegation of elders, who I presume will talk to both sides about how much tougher things were when they were young until they acquiesce or fall asleep, whichever comes first.

My sample ballot arrived. OK, a Decline to State Party member may vote in the primaries of other parties, but evidently won’t get to see what that ballot looks like until election day. I’m becoming so offended by this process that I may not vote.

A story you may have missed because the NY Times ran it in the business section with the Enron stories: while the Bushies are sensitive about releasing information about who they talked with, they quietly released to Congressional investigative committees run by loons like Dan Burton anything they wanted from the Clinton administration--without asking the Clintonites--including, yes, advice from outside advisers to the VP, and even a conversation between Clinton and Barak over Mark Rich.

Bush is asking Americans to donate two years of their lives to the country. Also he is pretty much eliminating job training for the unemployed, and youth job training programs, in his next budget. So that should free up some time.

I was right. The town where US forces were tricked into killing the wrong people in a faction fight, and the town where US forces tied people up, shot and then burned them, are one and the same.

Speaking of intelligence failures, those video-wills left by would-be martyrs, that the administration was claiming last week foreshadowed new terrorist attacks, turn out to be at least two years old.

Harold Pinter has throat cancer. This is deeply ironic.

The Washington Post points out that Jeb Bush wants his daughter’s drug abuse case to be treated in exactly the opposite manner to his preference for every other drug abuse case. This is also ironic, in a different way.

The warning CNN was pissing itself over all day--that Al Qaeda planned to fly a plane into a nuclear power plant--turns out to have come from just one captured fighter, suggesting that the CIA’s processing of intelligence is as good as it was when it failed to discover a certain plot last September, when one plane may or may not have been intended to fly into a nuclear plant. Not that anyone is talking about that. The CIA is obviously now over-compensating for its previous short-comings by reporting as intelligence any half-baked rumor that anyone is willing to pass on to it, and probably paying good money for it too.

Sharon once more opens his big mouth, inserts his big feet, and does a tap dance on his tonsils.

There isn’t any country outside the US where the State of the Union address played well. Read the world press, and you will quickly learn how to write “arrogance” in every language there is. He damaged talks between North and South Korea, not for the first time, and set back the moderates in Iran.

There is, admittedly, a delicate balance between bull in the China shop and Thank you sir, may I have another. I can’t figure how Saudi Arabia has gotten away with so much shit with no criticism worthy of the name. Well yes I can, it’s the oil stupid, but if there were ever an exporter of terrorism, it has to be the Saudis. That they don’t actually order terrorist actions is perhaps worse, since it’s purest cynicism. Bin Laden at least believes in a cause, no matter how moronic. This week the Saudi foreign minister has been attacking the western (British) press for a conspiracy against his country. See, in November 2000 there were a series of explosions, which may have been Al Qaeda, but the Saudis liked to claim were western alcohol smugglers fighting it out--Al Capone instead of Al Qaeda. So one of the victims of an explosion, a British citizen, was seized out of his hospital bed and tortured for 2 months until he confessed, as were 4 others. The British government decided to cover this up. Read any of the British papers for this week.

California primaries and more

A Guardian article compares the Bushes to the Kennedys: no fewer than 7 Bushes have now been arrested for booze or drugs.

Ari Fleischer says that to reveal what Enron said to Cheney would be a violation of the right to petition.

I forget yesterday to comment on something especially annoying in Bush rhetoric, including in the State of the Union speech: his constantly referring to the “civilized world.” This phrase should be arousing as much ire as “crusade” did early on, but for some reason isn’t. Anyone, when did Bush get to be civilized? He executes people and his knowledge of literature begins and ends with the Very Hungry Caterpillar.

And “axis of evil”? I don’t think Iran and Iraq will mind too much being called evil, but to be accused of working together?

Our allies the Afghans evidently tricked us into fighting their factional fights yet again last week, where US forces killed 17 of the wrong people. Oops.

OK, the voter pamphlet arrived today. I’ll make it easy for you: vote no.

First, everyone mentions terrorism, from that ridiculous statement on the inside cover by the Sec of State, who I believe just might be running for something this year, to the arguments on the props. Remember: if prop 41 fails, the terrorists win; also, if prop 41 passes, the terrorists win.

40 & 41 are bond measures and you know how I hate those. Regressive taxation is wrong, whatever the cause. Prop 40 is also huge, the largest ever, and includes things that don’t all belong in the same measure.

Incidentally, some of the No arguments are written by the scum of California politics, but you should vote no anyway.

41 is a bond measure for new voting equipment, not the sort of thing a bond measure usually pays for, but whatever. Note that it sets specifications only, meaning that counties pick their own equipment, meaning we’ll still have error rates that vary by district. The fact that the bond money will be paid out as matching funds makes that variance even greater, being dependent on what a district can afford.

42 requires gas taxes to be spent on transportation purposes.
Hypothecated taxes (dedicated taxes) are rarely a good idea, since the optimal tax and the optimal budget rarely coincide, but in this case it would also specify how the money is spent, setting priorities that may not make sense in years to come, and withdrawing money now going to the general budget to pay for transportation, which may not be the highest priority for a shrinking budget.

43 says that a voter who cast his vote legally should have their vote counted. That’s all it says, one sentence long. Which sounds good, and the idea of having that set forward as a principle to guide court cases, also good. But impossible. How do you require a ballot lost by the post office to be counted? Or one with a hanging chad or whatever? How do you count a ballot if you can’t determine intention? As an absolute, it becomes unworkable, and a magnet for many many lawsuits.

The one thing no one mentions re 43 is write-ins. I might vote for it if I thought it forced the registrars to count *all* votes, every Michael Mouse and Count Chocula (they currently only count votes given to certified write-in candidates), but the bit about casting vote according to the law probably stops that.

44 is on the ethics of chiropractors, and there’s a joke there I needn’t make, since we all thought it. It would de-license for a decade quacks, sorry chiropractors, guilty of insurance fraud, which may be ok, if a trifle too specific, but also outlaws the use of ambulance chasers, i.e., agents to secure business, which doesn’t seem like a problem. Also, stop bugging me with this shit.

45 would allow incumbents to get around term limits, one time only, by collecting signatures equal to 20% of those who voted for the office in the previous election. You know me, I oppose term limits strongly, but this is tinkering at best. It gives an advantage to politicians with money behind them, who would then owe favors in their lame duck term. At the level of principles, this may actually be worse than term limits themselves. To me, term limits are offensive because they take away the right of the voter to vote for whomever they want. To the authors of 45, term limits are offensive because they take away from politicians their right to be reelected (like the thing about not counting write-ins unless there is an official campaign, which treats the vote as something that belongs to the candidates, not to the voter). The system is not supposed to be for the benefit of the politicians but for that of the electors.

The state of the union is just tickety boo

Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia tells the NY Times that there is no limit to how far women can go in our society. As long as they don’t drive and are accompanied by a male relative and don’t try to leave the country without getting permission from a male relative.

Yet another Bush with a substance abuse problem: Noelle Bush (which I assume is for people who can’t afford a Christmas tree), Jeb’s daughter, caught for prescription fraud.

With communications between India and Pakistan largely cut off, the Pakistanis are resorting to sending over balloons with insulting messages.

Last week Shrub was complaining that Enron had kept its affairs secret and if his mother-in-law had known the true state of Enron’s finances she wouldn’t have lost $8,000. In the State of the Union address he talked about “accountability,” the closest he got to mentioning the biggest domestic issue currently before the nation. But he is also defending the refusal to release the names of contacts of Cheney’s energy task force, defending the government’s “privacy.” Interesting definition of what is private and what is, oh I don’t know, the people’s business.

The Post says that Bush rejected the idea of having a separate speech just for his economic plan, since this one would be dominated by national security. Bush said that economic security is national security. Of course he also insisted yesterday that Enron is a business story and not a political story.

Still, if one were to parse the State of the Union address solely in terms of hypocrisy, well it would certainly be easy. Bush defending liberty and the dignity of every life, quote unquote, for example. All right, he’ll get away with all that stuff. Anyway, when he wasn’t being hypocritical, he was being scarily evangelical. If the head of Amnesty International says that “right, liberty, and justice are true for all people everywhere” [the quote is approximate] it’s one thing, when a president of the US says it, look out.

Again making my point about the nation-state, he accuses the enemies (at least he didn’t use the phrase evil-doers) of seeing the entire world as their battle field. Of course, part of the speech at least finally told us who the next target is, Iraq, not Somalia. Can’t wait. Maybe we should start a pool on the code name: “Operation Desert ______.”

Incidentally, I’ve been hearing the war in Afghanistan referred to as the first war of the 21st century. And people accuse me of being pessimistic. It reminds me of the first book to call World War I by that appellation, in its title yet, published I believe in 1920.

Other quick takes on the speech: the State of the Union has “never been stronger.” What, never? I could have sworn there was a day in 1884, May 13th I believe....

We are now working with Russia, China and India as never before. How did India get on that last?

Especially in tragedy, God is near. Well you know how it is when you’re driving past car crashes, you just have to look.

My economic policy can be summed up in one words: jobs. You just knew it would be a one-syllable word, didn’t you?

Well, since it didn’t make the Washington Post, for some reason, maybe it’s another incident of American self-censorship, or maybe it’ll be all over the news in a day, but evidently Bush has a fairly serious heart condition. That low heart rate he boasts about is not from exercise and is too low to be a good thing, thus the pretzel incident.

White House counsel Alberto Gonzales says that the Geneva Convention is “obsolete” in terms of questioning prisoners. He probably read that book by the French general describing how they got information out of prisoners during the Algerian War (torture and then execute), for which the general was forced to pay a modest fine (for defending it in a book, not for actually doing it). What does France think it is, anyway? Israel?

Yesterday I reiterated my thesis that the wars against Muslims is a war in defense of the nation-state. Today Bush says of the prisoners, “They know no country.” Well sure, they’re in Guantanamo, I’m not even sure what country that is, Cuba or the US.

I heard on NPR but don’t see in tomorrow’s papers that Saudi Arabia, noting that over 100 of its citizens are imprisoned in Guano, wants them back. The US might return prisoners to their nation of origin, NPR says, if they promise to imprison them. Which brings up my point that we are encouraging violations of due process all over the world. What we are asking of Saudi Arabia and other countries is to just put them in jail, no questions asked. Nor is this the only time. Some of the prisoners, as I can’t remember if I mentioned before or not, came from Bosnia; we demanded they be turned over, without presenting any evidence, and it happened. When India demanded that Pakistan arrest militants after the parliament building massacre, Pakistan did, and Bush applauded them for it. No trial of course, just detention.

And justice is doing well, all over the world (theme for the day, or at least the e-mail):

Ashcroft ordered a statue of the Spirit of Justice covered up (boob showing) (worse, he was once photographed next to said boob) (which makes a pair of boobs, of course).

India says that two of the guys who attacked the American Center in Delhi, who were shot dead, confessed to being Pakistanis. Um, just before they died.

Jim Lehrer, who is beginning to give Larry King a run for his money in the softball interview department, talked to Interim Chief Warlord of Afghanistan Karzai today--he’s in the US this week. In an earlier interview, which it will be interesting to see if it’s quoted in the American press--he supported amputation, but only for the rich, who should know better. Hear that, Ken Lay? Well, Bush didn’t cut off Lay’s hand, but he did give him a diminutive name, Kenny Boy.

The US sub Grenville, which last year sunk a Japanese fishing boat, today hit a US warship.

Cheney is still refusing to reveal how closely his energy policy was influenced by Enron. It is a matter of principle: they are fighting to preserve the right of future presidents to receive candid advice from the people who have bought the right to give that advice.

US forces are now on patrol in the Philippines, but only in areas where they’re not expecting any rebels to be. Which means we spent millions to send them on a nature hike.

Evidently the Bush administration defines an illegal combatant as one who is “beyond the control of any state.” A couple of problems with that.

First, I thought we bombed and invaded a whole country that we considered to *be* responsible for them. Second, we didn’t recognize the Afghan government, so, what, no Afghans could take up arms because the US didn’t recognize that they had a state to control them? Third, if we’re going to war with entities that consider themselves beyond the control of any state, does that mean we’re going to invade Enron next?

Still, that definition confirms something I said early on, which is that the Morons Crusade was fought on behalf of the nation-state, any geographically defined nation-state, including the Philippines, Indonesia, China, Pakistan etc, against any (non-corporate) extra-national force or ideology.

A cute NY Times piece on the mayor of Penn., PA, pop 475, who hadn’t been running, but 2 people wrote him in. This is evidently not uncommon in small towns, write-in non-candidates winning. Isn’t that 19-year old mayor who lives at home (Daily Show joke: when his mom tells him to clean his room, he tells her you can’t fight city hall) also from PA? I’d be interested in knowing how many uncontested local elections there are now, and whether we’re gotten to the point where local government is atrophying from lack of interest.

I had a lengthy fight with a Safeway cashier over some chicken breasts today. They were marked two for one, and then additionally $3 off each package because someone had obviously way over-ordered. But the cashier tried to take the $3 off *before* doing the two for one, effectively eliminating one of the two $3 coupons. She never saw my point but eventually gave it to me with a strong sense that she thought I’d gotten away with something. I came close to mentioning that my math SATs were 710 and she was working as a cashier, but didn’t, because that would be wrong.

A Russian group called Walking Together may be worth paying attention to; Putin’s attempt to build a Nazi Youth.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph suggests that instead of sending reps to Guantanamo, they should check for inhumane conditions in the British train system.

Clifford Baxter of Enron commits suicide. Or does he? Three words for the Democrats, especially Hillary Clinton: Vince. Foster. Payback.

London Times headline, about a Chinese shopowner insisting he couldn’t be evicted because of feng shui: “Feng Shui Claim is Ruled Out of Line.”

A Hungarian soap opera filmed a wedding scene using a real registrar, accidentally marrying the stars. Said the actress, I can’t believe I married that idiot.

McNeil-Lehrer had the most obsequious interview today with Colin Powell, mostly over the Middle East, mostly on the subject of why that naughty Mr Arafat won’t obey his masters. No mention of settlements, no mention of yesterday’s car bombing, no mention of assassinations, no, literally no criticism of Israel whatsoever, a lot of talk about how bad it was for the Palestinians to import arms but nothing about the US export of arms to Israel while it assassinates people and blows up tv transmitters and so on.

www.whitehouse.org/initiatives/patriot/index.asp

Asking for increased military spending including yet more military wage increases, Bush calls the military America’s “highest calling.” Yes, like the priesthood, but with more weaponry.

Never thought I’d mention Mariah Carey, who is evidently a very famous singer with large breasts and a larger ego, none of whose songs I’ve ever heard, who was just dropped by her label. Variety headline: Virgin Sacrifices Carey.

So Bush is insisting that not going ahead with a tax cut is exactly the same as a tax increase. But what about Florida, where Jeb Bush just did exactly that? Ari Fleischer: “That’s a state matter, and the president doesn’t weigh in on state matters.” Dick Cheney: “I think if you think about it, you know, what a state does is much more fiscal management, whereas what we’re talking about at the federal level is what really governs the overall shape and direction of our economy.” Go back in your bunker, Dick. Maybe Dubya was the smart one after all.

Speaking of the smart one, Neil Bush has been in Saudi Arabia. I’ve often asked what happened to him, since he got away with murder in the Silverado S & L bankruptcy (sort of the Enron case of its time, I suppose) by pretending to be so stupid that he just had no idea what was going on. He did, of course, and my reading of the case was that he personally took a house as a bribe. Anyway, he was in Saudi giving advice on their PR problems and why those darned Israelis are just so popular in the US, despite their prime minister just having rubbed out a witness against him, execution-style, in Beirut. From a Saudi paper:

Win American hearts through sustained lobbying: Neil Bush
By Khalil Hanware & K.S. Ramkumar, Arab News Staff

JEDDAH, 22 January -- Neil Bush, brother of US President George Bush, said here yesterday that the distorted image of the Arab world could be removed through the sustained lobbying of US politicians.

“The US media campaign against the interests of Arabs and Muslims and the American public opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be influenced through a sustained lobbying and PR effort,” Bush, chairman and chief executive officer of Ignite! Inc., said in his keynote address on the concluding day of the three-day Jeddah Economic Forum at Hilton Hotel here.

The support for Israel had been strong for many years because of the strong public opinion in its favor and continuous lobbying by Israeli supporters among politicians. After all, politicians shape policies based on public opinion, he said.

He recalled that many of those whom he had met throughout his travels in the Middle East expressed sorrow, sympathy, anger or concern over the tragic events of Sept. 11 and how it had affected the US.

“Over 3,000 lives were lost through a brutal and horrific act that affected not only Americans but peoples all over the world. I want to express gratitude to all for their support. Without the support of the peace-loving people in this region and all over the world, the US president cannot succeed in his fight against terror,” said Bush, who freely interacted with delegates before he began his speech on “The corporate challenges of human resources in a complex global environment.”

In the speech, he called for the root causes of terror to be explored. “There could be economic disparities, social unrest or unemployment causing growing dissatisfaction in the region. But I have been told that the bigger issue is the resolving of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There was only lip service for ending the conflict, but since Sept. 11 there has been a difference. There seems to be a sense of urgency. The difference is public opinion has shifted. Public opinion shapes public policy dramatically. It’s true in the US, in this part of the world and elsewhere,” he said.

“In the US for years we believed in Israel’s right to exist. We still see Israel as a loyal friend, one the US will not turn its back on. That is the fundamental belief in our country,” Bush said.

“The US media has been reporting Israelis defending themselves from rebels disrupting their stability. So public opinion is bigger in my opinion. No wonder the people of the US side with Israel. And it’s no wonder given the politics of our leaders who are steadfast in their support for Israelis,” he continued.

The scene in this part of the world is quite different, said Bush, who has been visiting the region for the last 10 years. “I hope America sees Arabs as I see them, and understand Islam as I understand it. Leave behind the misunderstandings about our two peoples and two cultures. And let us help bridge the gap by understanding each other,” Bush declared.

Dubya on MLK day: “He refused to answer hatred with hatred or meet violence with violence.” Didn’t know Bush liked that kind of thing.

The EU tells both Israel and Palestine to knock it off, especially mentioning that Israel should stop destroying all of the EU’s development projects in Palestine, $20m worth so far. Unclear if the targeting is deliberate.

Amazon.com makes a profit. This is surely one of the signs of the Apocalypse.

Today the EU Food and Farm Commissioner missed the launch of the EU’s Food Safety Administration. He had salmonella.

Bush names Tom Coburn co-chair of his AIDS advisory committee. I know he doesn’t believe in condoms or, you know, sex, but there’s something else about Coburn that I can’t remember. Anyone?

New on the PC front, at least in Britain: the term “Asian” is out. Seems Indians don’t like being lumped together with Muslim loons.

I’ve seen a newspaper obit and 2 tv pieces on the death of Peggy Lee, and everyone’s avoiding the obvious line: Yes, that’s all there is.

You know what they call a quarter pounder with foie gras in New York?

Long, but a must read by Sy Hersh on the assistance North Korea got from Pakistan in its nuclear weapons program (and on how to keep it hidden). This says Hersh, was everyone’s worst fear: that a third world country would become a nuclear proliferator. Indeed, the article says that Pakistan passed on this info because it couldn’t afford cash for the missiles it was buying from NK, but also says that members of Pakistan’s nuclear program hate the US. The CIA report at the center of this article was issued in June. If NK knew that, while nothing was said publicly, it may be owe reason it’s been so brazen about its nukes: the US was already covering up on its behalf. Just as we earlier covered up for Pakistan because it was our ally in imposing on Afghanistan a government we later overthrew.

The US objects to Libya being named president of the UN Human Rights Commission, the US delegate dilating on how sad it is that this occurs on the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. Why if Dr. King had tried to speak out for human rights in Libya, he’d have been shot...no, wait...what I meant was...

Even if Bush had made a case for invading Iraq, he hasn’t made one for doing it in a rush. I think he’s not doing himself much good with the recent burst of “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”, by which I mean his repeated statements that he’s running out of patience, and Iraq is running out of time. There just seems to be a lot of running going on, when most of the world thinks there should be walking. Today Bush asked (read this out loud with a really annoying whine), “How much time do we need to see clearly that he is not disarming?” As much time as it fucking takes, so pop a Ritalin already.

The real reason for the rush isn’t exactly a moral or political argument, or one the Bushies can make in public: the delicate flowers of the US military can only actually go to war with Iraq in a few weeks of the year, otherwise it’s just too hot. So Bush’s patience was always going to run out in late January (and then he has to pull over and fuel up in the giant fuel pump that is the Persian Gulf, to beat a metaphor into the ground like a red-headed step-child). In fact, it will run out one week from today (the UN inspectors’ report is due out on Jan. 27, the State of the Union is Jan. 28).

Here’s the first paragraph of a WashPost story:

President Bush yesterday dismissed U.N. Security Council members who have said weapons inspectors should be given more time in Iraq, recalling that all of them, "including the French," voted last November to impose "serious consequences" if Iraq did not disclose and dismantle all of its weapons of mass destruction programs.

I always said that the resolution was written so that the US could claim it said one thing and France etc that it said another, but here’s Bush saying that the French actually voted for his war two months ago, they just forgot.

And god knows we need all that oil, because now we’re building a thousand-mile freeway in the Antarctic. Really. Between McMurdo Sound and the Scott-Amundsen base.

The Italian Supreme Court awarded custody of an 11-year old boy to his father because they deemed his mother over-protective. In Italy, imagine that!

The war to sell the most expensive hamburger in NY is actually escalating, with the DB Bistro Moderne selling one for $50. There’s a truffle on the side and a bit of foie gras in the burger. I swear this thing is a joke, because it’s called the DB Burger Royale, and the chef is French--remember the conversation in “Pulp Fiction” about what they call a Quarter Pounder with cheese in Paris? The Guardian liked the Royale. Personally, I had to go out to eat today because of a blackout and spent $7 on a hamburger, which seemed like quite enough.

The Times says that South Africa was behind the assassination of Olof Palme in 1986.

The new Afghanistan government’s chief justice bans cable tv as against Islam. He is also against co-education. Here we go again! Actually, most of the Taliban laws haven’t been changed. The punishment for adultery is still stoning.

Rumsfeld says that people criticizing conditions at the Guantanamo concentration camp are “ill-informed.” Yes, that was the idea behind putting them in Guantanamo, to make sure that everyone was ill-informed.

To solve a problem in the Bulgarian parliament of members voting for their absent neighbors, their seats will be fitted with scales to ensure that someone of the proper weight is voting.

The surrealist compliment generator.

As I write, the BBC news is playing. I’m hoping for pictures, just out today, of the prisoners in Guantanamo. Well, we had a pretty good idea what sort of thing would happen when they used the least accessible military base the US owns, not excluding the North Pole, and when they shaved their heads and beards and pretended it wasn’t to humiliate them. Still, sensory deprivation goes beyond what I expected. Evidently they are wearing goggles with tape over them, mittens, earmuffs, surgical masks, and of course handcuffs and leg shackles. The hilarious explanation of, well, one of those things, is that some of them have tuberculosis and might spit at the guards. No one evidently asked why they aren’t being treated for this alleged TB.

Speaking of handcuffs, British Airways (which deserves applause for stopping Britain’s continuing deportation of Zimbabweans into the hands of Mugabe’s thugs) has 240 handcuffs missing. A spokesman said that BA staff are so professional they are practicing their restraint procedures at home.

In East Sussex, a woman tired of dealing with Jehovah’s Witnesses knocking on her door, knocked on theirs during services and talked to them for 20 minutes about Nirvana.

A failing law student kills 3 people at his school. Now I can see how he might be failing, because I’m pretty sure that mass murder is actually against the law. They probably should have taught him that.

The Norwegian finance minister enters a gay marriage.

A spiced tomato juice company gets a Royal Warrant, which means they get to advertise themselves “By appointment to Her Majesty the Queen.” You understand that in this case, we’re talking about something used for a Bloody Mary, which the Times totally missed the irony of.

The statement of charges against John Walker, who I think I’ll continue calling Johnny Taliban if you don’t mind (just as I’m planning to call Enron chairman Ken Lay “Kennie Boy,” Bush’s nickname for him, not least because “Ken Lay” sounds like it’s in Pig Latin) seem interestingly ridiculous. They’re avoiding treason charges because there are actual standards of proof for that one, which they couldn’t possibly manage. Evidently he is supposed to have known about the attacks before they occurred. Given that the actual hijackers didn’t know in advance, how likely is that? One might also ask, if it’s so freaking easy for someone to walk in off the street and be told the top secret terrorist plans, how did the CIA not manage it?

Speaking of incompetence, there’s an interesting article in Slate today on the scrambling of jets to intercept the hijacked planes on Sept 11. I’ve been wondering about the timing of that for 4 months. Now forgetting that it took the FAA quite a while to bother passing the information that was a problem on to NORAD, and that NORAD had never trained for such a mission, and that it took them several minutes to order planes into the air (and,
which the article doesn’t mention, that the planes sent to intercept the 4th plane did not come from the nearest air field to DC, which had no planes available), the author compares the mileage covered by those fighters to the time elapsed, and amazingly enough they weren’t actually flying at anywhere near top speed. Guess it wasn’t an emergency (and this was after the first plane crashed).

Col. Mustard in the library with a pretzel

Trust the Israelis to assassinate the head of an organization while it was observing a ceasefire.

On Groundhog Day, that town in Pennsylvania with the funny name is going to be protected by huge numbers of police and National Guard, in case of terrorism or it turns out to be Osama rather than a groundhog that pops of that hole, cuz you never know.

650 US troops are off to the Philippines. Isn’t it great how initiating new counter-insurgency operations doesn’t require any public or Congressional approval whatsoever anymore?

A question I didn’t even think to ask has been answered: Bush’s little pretzel incident was not alcohol-related. I didn’t think to ask, but his doctor ran a test, which is kind of interesting by itself.

Ford couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time. Bush can’t watch tv and eat a pretzel at the same time. Clinton could have sex and smoke a cigar at the same time. It’s called multi-tasking, people!

So back to Enron. Saletan of Slate is right that there is a danger of an investigation into non-existent wrong-doing by the Bushies could be the same sort of thing as Whitewater, an investigation without a crime. But since there were plenty of crimes associated with Enron, there should still be a thorough investigation, and if there turns out to be evidence of something, cool. Cheney should, however, be finally forced to divulge his contacts with energy companies including Enron while developing the admin’s energy policy.

There is other capital to be made out of this. That the administration has Enron’s stink on it, and that Enron got a change of venue because everyone in Texas down to dogcatcher was involved with the company in some way, suggests that now is the time to push campaign finance reform, when Bush can be embarrassed into not vetoing it. Also, the final collapse may not involve the Bushies, but the whole company’s very existence depended on its relationship with government, and the way it bought itself free from oversight. It’s too bad Phil Gramm was going to retire anyway, because I’d so much rather see him hounded out of office: while he was taking a quarter million from them, his wife as chair of the Commodity (something) Trading Commission (can’t read my own handwriting here), made sure that energy swaps, Enron’s specialty, was completely deregulated and
then, that done, quit the Commission for a seat on the board of .... Enron.

Washington Post headline: “Bush No Worse for Fall.” No worse than what?

Top Prince Harry chat-up line (and I’m not making this up): “Do you want to come back to my palace?” Yes, it’s been a hell of a week for British gossip, starting with the Harry Smokes Pot one. Charles made him go to a rehab clinic for a day and get the royal tour, which everyone praises as excellent fathering, although one wonders if that was really what the patients needed. How’d you like to be the one who threw Harry out of a bar or restaurant? It does actually happen. Once after calling a chef a “fucking Frog”, indicating that he has his grandfather’s talent for international relations.

Also on the gossip mill, the Archbishop of Canterbury is retiring and will be replaced by... well, Prince Charles wants someone who will be on his side in the re-marriage fight, but the gambling money, 3 to 1, is on a Pakistani, about whom a huge number of rumors have been let loose, not that anyone’s racist mind you. Seems he bought his first post, and used to be a Catholic and eats babies.

And Cecil Parkinson. A feeding frenzy delayed for 18 years is an ugly thing. Lord Parkinson (various cabinet posts in the Thatcher administration) schtupped a secretary, who refused to get an abortion. The kid came out with a brain tumor and autistic and with other things wrong. Their was a gag order on the press and on the mother and the kid, which lasted until she turned 18, last week. She’s already been the star of a documentary, and the story is that the gag order actually prevented any acknowledgment of the kid’s existence by anyone: no parts in school plays, no name up on bulletin boards etc. Total bullshit, it turns out, but a great story.

One of the British papers has a helpful Olympics article on how to get booze in Utah. Evidently there’s more of it than we thought, including something called Polygamy Porter.

I was almost beginning to wonder if I’d been pounding Israel too hard lately until I read a report by FAIR that said that when tv news talks about violence starting up in Israel, or lulls in violence, it means exclusively violence against Jews, ignoring the other kind.

So in the interests of balance, here’s another story indicating Israel’s unfitness to have control over the holy sites: they’ve decided not to recognize the new head of the Greek Orthodox community.

Speaking of balance, I’ve been meaning to address Kashmir, just to say that while Pakistan is certainly supporting terrorism there (and I was singularly unimpressed with Musharof’s speech yesterday) and playing footsie with nuclear war, it is the case that India is holding on to Kashmir and shouldn’t be.

So what is an “unlawful combatant” anyway? And if you actually invade a country do you get to decide who has a right to resist your invasion? And what do you mean, they weren’t wearing uniforms--they had the only uniform necessary for the US to consider them targets: brown skin.

In Alaska a judge strikes down the removal of a man’s gun permit simply because he was insane.

Speaking of which, the army chief of India (after saying he was ready to fight a nuclear war), suggested that war, nuclear or otherwise was near. “When two countries mobilize their forces and place them on the border, it is not normal.” Evidently he hasn’t been paying a lot of attention the last few decades.

Last week, Tony Blair went to the region to be a “calming influence.” This week, he’s gonna sell India 60 Hawk jets.

Russia’s last independent tv station is forced into bankruptcy.

The German Christian Dems finally pick someone to run for chancellor, and it is not the party chair, who happens to be a woman, but the far-right loon leader of Bavaria (slogan: “laptops and lederhosen”, which may be the dirtiest thing I’ve ever heard).

Homosexuality is back in Afghanistan. Hurrah. Or not, actually. Did you know that Kandahar used to be known as the sodomy capital of south west Asia? Neither did I. The reason not hurrah is that it invariably involves children. Indeed, Mullah Omar got his start intervening to get one boy away from two warlords who both wanted him as their catamite. The Taliban put a stop to that sort of thing.

Some time back I mentioned a 9-month old girl gang raped in South Africa as an AIDS cure. I’d as soon not have had to think about that again, but the story’s back (oh, she will never be able to have children, assuming she survives, and needs surgery). See, she was given anti-retroviral drugs to prevent AIDS transmission. The government has told doctors to stop giving such drugs to rape victims, became Mbeki is an idiot.

What the hell, I can’t end on that: Winona Ryder explained to the court that she was shoplifting in order to research a role in a movie (she has no roles in any movies coming up, so maybe she meant the Saks surveillance camera).

The Pentagon is claiming that it ordered journalists not to transmit pictures of the Afghan prisoners in their S&M chains & masks gear being loaded into cages to be transferred to the US’s other colony in Guantanamo, in order to protect their dignity. It tried that one on after claiming that it was at the request of the Red Cross, which it was not. They won’t tell whether they drugged them or not.

The Supreme Court rules that the Americans with Disabilities Act doesn’t apply to people disabled from doing their jobs so long as they can brush their teeth. Hey, I don’t write the opinions, I just report them. Scalia, whose son doesn’t believe in repetitive stress injuries and is about to be recess appointed into a labor dept. job, probably should have recused himself.

At yesterday’s Question Time in the House of Commons, the new bald leader of the Tory party quoted a member of the government as admitting that there was a lot of crime. When told the quote had been made up, he followed up, “Well, if apparently he said no such thing, wasn’t he in reality, in saying no such thing, correct in what he apparently did not say.”

Someone has averaged out the light in the universe, and determined that it is turquoise. Which just confirms what my cat has thought all along.

Speaking of stupid jobs, there is an EU commission working on the burning question of how many lumps a sauce can have before it’s designated a vegetable.

So when Dubya promised to cut strategic nukes by 2/3, he actually meant not to destroy them but to put them into mothballs, reducing the value of his promise effectively to zero. Terrif.

He also called the Pakistanis “Pakis,” which I’m sure went down real well. Presumably he was just being a moron, not actually intending a slur.

As opposed to an Israeli MP who called the US ambassador something that was translated from Hebrew as “little Jewboy” (Yehudon). Just how many slurs for Jews are there in the Hebrew language I wonder?

As part of a tourism push in Whitby, in the west of England, Whitby Abbey is promoting itself as the home of Dracula. Some people are questioning the theological aspects of this.

Speaking of questionable theological aspects, the Vatican has issued new guidelines on how to deal with paedophile priests. They include secret internal trials. They do not include informing the police.

Tom Daschle blames Bush tax cut for economic crisis, which let’s face it isn’t actually true, although they sure won’t help in the short or long term. Bush responds that “not over my dead body” will they raise taxes which, typically, means the exact opposite of what Bush thinks it means. Also, no one’s actually calling for tax increases (or actually, repealing tax cuts that haven’t gone into effect yet, which Bush went out of his way to say still count as tax increases. Which they don’t.).

What does count as a tax increase is the new increase in the California sales tax, which was actually the expiration of a tax cut from many years ago, which was constructed so that no one in the state legislature would actually have to vote for it, it would just go up all by itself. I don’t know if this is actually unconstitutional, but it is certainly taxation without representation: not only did our representatives not vote for it, but the people responsible have probably all been term-limited out. Immaculate taxation.

There’s a terrific piece by Peter Maas in today’s NY Times Magazine on an Afghani warlord, a lot of fun. Also fun is a piece in the newspaper about corruption in the new and improved Afghanistan. It’s the classic case of a reporter not leaving his hotel room to write a story. In fact he can’t leave his hotel room without paying hundreds of dollars and leaving behind all his equipment. One reporter, CNN I think, got them to write out an itemized receipt, including $220 for “pure extortion.” Doesn’t even mention mini-bar charges and porn. Fun, as I say, but somehow I don’t think the tragedy of corruption in Afghanistan is that CNN had to bargain to get its satellite equipment back.

Washington Post headline: “Texas frames Bush, Much to His Liking.” On the same day, although not in the same newspaper, Houston is proclaimed the flabbiest place in America.

Speaking of the least introspective man in America, Bush was asked how 9/11 had changed him and responded (snapped, William Safire says) “Talk to my wife”, he doesn’t look in the mirror. Safire thinks Bush meant that he was always a great mass of wonderfulness and that the American people are only now beginning to appreciate him. Yick.

There’s a piece by Terry Jones, the only Python doing regular war commentary, in today’s Observer (observer.co.uk/comment, available for a week) on why it is good to put bags on the heads of Afghan prisoners.

The Afghans finally bag an American, and about fucking time too, I say. While even I can’t escape the doubtless reprehensible sentiment that it’s better for one of them to die than one of us, the US needs to be bloodied in its wars, to stop entering into them so easily.

I forget who it was--Tommy Franks?--who yesterday referred to Somalia as a failed nation, presumably indicating it’s about to get a spanking, but I’d love to know what the standards are. Undemocratic leadership? Do I have to bring up the butterfly ballot again--I think not. Allows terrorists to operate unmolested? I doubt the terrorists were actually taking flying lessons in Somalia, so give it a freaking break.

Suharto’s son Tommy is suing the people he paid a $2 million bribe, intended to secure a pardon. He wants his money back.

In the run-up to the French presidential elections, another scandal hits Chirac, who collects them like Jenna Bush collects empty tequilla bottles. When Chirac was prime minister, his government paid ransom for hostages in Lebanon, which is not the scandal although it should be. No, the scandal is that the Gaullists skimmed part of it off the top. It’s still not Iran-Contra, but the French think relatively small.

Don’t iron your euros

In 1951, Britain was considering a plan to divide Afghanistan up between Russia and Pakistan. Is it too late now?

A 19-year old is elected mayor of Mercer, Pennsylvania. He lives with his parents.

Pakistan demands evidence before handing over the Kashmiris India wants. Either that, or the newspaper reporters have all gone on vacation and just set up a computer program which inserts the names of different countries into old stories. Tomorrow: Montana threatens to bomb Idaho if it doesn’t hand over terrorists. No wait, that could happen.

Pakistan is walking a hilariously fine line over Kashmir, since it wants to look like it’s backing off of supporting terrorists without actually stopping support for Kashmiris who are killing Indians. You know, freedom fighters. They now say they’ll only support actual Kashmiris who are fighting for independence and not, say, Arabs who are helping them. Blatant discrimination, I say.

Russia is now using its old gulags from ordinary criminals, some 100,000 of them.

The decennial British census shows that residential segregation is increasing in Northern Ireland. I might also add that punishment beatings and shootings were at record levels in 2001. Peace, ain’t it grand.

The Swiss have re-relaxed airline security and are allowing Swiss army knives onto planes, including those heading for the US.

People have been playing with the euro. They find that it is ok to wash it but not iron it, because of the encoded strip. Also, the odds of it landing heads or tails vary by country. Belgium’s national design, for example, produces a 56:44 ratio in favor of tails.

PS

In that last email I said that I thought I had peed myself at the Gare du Nord. I of course meant that I myself had peed at the Gare du Nord, not that I’d had a nasty accident there.

One New Year’s tradition good for me is the release of British cabinet papers under the 30-rule year. Which means that today Edward Heath was having to defend internment without trial, not today’s but that in Northern Ireland in 1971, which was singularly stupid and incompetent and, as it turns out, was warned against by the military.

But if that was short-sighted, it was as nothing beside the report of the High Commissioner in Uganda, who said that he thought Idi Amin would turn out just fine.

The city of Bradford is spending a fortune upgrading some of its bus stops. There will be art and literature in electronic form, and music chosen according to the color of your clothes. It will still smell of urine, of course.

Speaking of urine, the Guardian sent its European reporters out to see what they could buy with a euro. Most of them were looking for hangover cures, but settled for buying more booze. The toilet at the Gare du Nord (where I think I once peed myself), has upped its prices from 6 francs to 1 euro (6.5 francs), but in Berlin you can use the city toilette for 40 minutes (don’t ask, it’s a German thing) for 1/2 a euro. Paris cathedrals also raised the price of lighting a candle from 10 francs to 2 euros.

Speaking of being screwed by euros, there are some bank robbers in German prisons, who got away with about $5 million in 1995 but were caught. The 1st one will be released in 2003, but it’s all in marks.

The EU is great, isn't it? Spain just released the country's largest drug smuggler on bail pending a trial at which he faced a 60 year prison term, because evidently jails frighten him. It's a phobia, see? The EU has turned Spain into Sweden, that's the only explanation.

The guy disappeared, of course.

India has given Pakistan a list of 30 people it wants turned over, and also says that it can win a nuclear war.

I mentioned that Sharon's choice for head anti-terrorism adviser had killed Palestinian prisoners with a rock, but should have made it clear that Sharon knew it. The man, of course, was pardoned and never served a day.

A Dutch man called his wife and told her he'd been kidnapped, in order to spend Christmas with his mistress.

A Utah company is adding to the DVD player what it surely needed: censorship. Don't want to see Kate Winslet's boobs in Titanic (or any other movie she's ever made), or those disquieting dead people in Saving Private Ryan? You'll be able to download a "fix," putting a corset on Kate and flak over the corpses.

I can't believe it took so long, but Pakistan finally threatened India with nukes (for the first time this month, anyway). And India is busily preparing camoflage for the Taj Mahal.

Remember all those movies about the pyramids in Egypt being constructed by slaves dragging huge rocks? Nope, it seems the pyramids aren't carved stone at all but were molded on site.

Getting anxious for the US to pick on another country? Somalia, Iraq, whatever? It seems the real reason that it hasn't happened is that after bombing Sudan, Afghanistan and Kosovo with hundreds of cruise missiles, we're almost out of stock. There are still Tomahawks, but their range isn't long enough to reach many of the targets inside Iraq, and that would leave the Navy without missiles.

Said a producer of Ally McBeal, "I wish Ally McBeal and other shows could be [in Afghanistan] to show them what the real world is like."

Israel's High Court says that Sharon's top anti-terrorism adviser must step down, and all he did wrong was beat two Palestinian prisoners to death with a rock 17 years ago.

Tony Blair, on vacation in Egypt, is present as a 4,600 year old skeleton is dug up, and is now subject to a curse. Sadly, he is to be eaten by a crocodile, a hippopatamus and a lion.