Restoring Confidence

New Yorker cartoon: 2 dogs looking at bowls filled with paper. Oh no, not homework again.

The German Christian Democrats are going after the gay vote, including a proposal I’ve never heard of in this country: giving gay partners spousal immunity from being forced to testify against each other.

The Israeli Cabinet votes 17-2 in favor of banning Palestinians buying houses in Jewish communities.

Hopefully, tonight’s news will juxtapose images of WorldCom executives refusing to testify before Congress with Bush calling questions of his own immoral and indeed illegal dealings with Harken Oil old-style politics. (That they were illegal is undeniable, whatever Bush might say.)

Look at the reporting of the hearings and of Bushs alleged plan to crack down on corporate malfeasance, and you will notice a lot of talk about the need to restore confidence. In fact, let me pause here and use that new-fangled Internet thingy to do a count.

OK, too early for a transcript. The White House site does have this headline, though: President Urges Congress to Support Nation’s Priorities. You’d think in a proper democracy, what the Congress supported would automatically constitute the nations priorities, wouldn’t you? Ah, just kidding.

At least twice, though. The problem is that confidence, for Bush as for the CEOs, is something to be manipulated. Harken, for example, used false accountancy methods (fuzzy math, if you will) to over-inflate its value, and Bush took advantage to sell his stock just before more accurate figures came out and the stock tanked. If he were selling anything other than stocks, that would count as fraud, selling something by pretending it is something else, like when they told me buying a computer would make my life easier. And since Bush was on the audit committee--and try picturing Chimp Boy on the audit committee of anything--this constitutes actual fraud. He doesnt want honesty in business, he wants confidence in business. How hard can that be to create, when the polls suggest that the American people have confidence in the leadership abilities of George W. Doofus? As I wrote this, I was reminded of something I wrote here last September 22:

The problem with Bush’s jihad is of course the one Republicans saw in every one of Clinton’s military adventures: no end strategy. Asked about that 2 days ago, Rumsfeld hemmed and hawed and then said that the end would be when Americans were persuaded that they were safe. Actually, much of what we’ve heard about security the last 2 weeks has been entirely about PR. Listen to it the next time someone talks about planes or skyscrapers: the language most of the time is about making people *feel* they are safe, not actually making people safer, except inasmuch as it is necessary to the goal of altering perception.

Indeed, much of Bush activity has been about creating the illusion of activity, given the complete inability to capture bin Laden or the Al Qaida leadership. Although as weve seen with the dirty bomb scare (remember that? just 4 weeks ago today) and vague terror alerts, perception can be altered in the other direction too when it suits the administrations needs.

So remember, when they talk about restoring confidence in the markets, what they mean is what they always mean: You are getting sleepy, sleepy, and when you wake up you will feel secure and confident and that your president isnt a mindless dipstick.

The Observer reports that teenage girls are using webcams to solicit gifts. [Oh good, my new, up to date word processor’s spellcheck has never heard of webcams. Um, or spellcheck, which is a bit worrying.] 14-year olds getting CDs in exchange for pictures of themselves. Also, some of these camgirls sell advertisement to hardcore websites. What a world! And how do you find these sites? Kidding, just kidding.

I mentioned the dog running against Katherine Harris. The website is www.percyforcongress.org. Putting the lick back into Republican.

The US has finally admitted that it killed civilians in Afghanistan, but still seems to be insisting that its planes came under anti-aircraft fire from the wedding party.

Looking at both print and television news sources, I sometimes conclude that a picture is worth zero words. Yesterday or the day before the BBC ran film from that incident a couple of weeks back where Israeli tanks fired on civilians, killing many, including children. The film shows the tank having a clear view of who it was it fired on (of their backs anyway--they were running away at the time) at close range. Nothing in any newspaper since.

The wisdom and the blessing of Divine Providence

I trust everyone saw the July 4 event in which everyone inc Shrub shouted the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance. Makes you proud to be a Christian, I mean American. Bush talked about how “the wisdom and the blessing of Divine Providence” have guided the nation. Oh good, I’d hate it to think it was you, George.

Japan’s farm minister says that whales cause (human) starvation by eating a lot of fish.

The US is planning to resume helping Peru and Colombia shoot down drug-smuggling planes, having passed the statute of limitations on fuckups just 14 months after participating in Peru’s little mishap with all the American missionaries. You may remember that the Americans working with the Peruvians at that time a) worked for a private contractor, b) didn’t speak very good Spanish. The contractor was actually a CIA front company, now defunct, which I assume means they were doing an end-run around Congressional undersight [see, I said I’d use that one at some point]. No one’s explaining why it’s a good idea to shoot down planes and kill people over drugs (it’s also against international law), as 38+ planes have been in Peru under this program, much less because they don’t respond to their radios; I mean, if I don’t answer your emails in a timely fashion, please don’t fire a missile at me. The CIA has taken its balls-up and gone home, so the State Department will be in charge of the resumed program and, once again, private contractors, mostly the same ones the CIA used. I don’t actually know which is worse, having the spooks telling foreigners when to shoot down planes, having diplomats do it, or having private contractors do it.

Those poor foreigners: we’re guided by the wisdom and the blessing of Divine Providence, all they get are lowest-bid contractors with bad Spanish-language skills.

I think I deserve some sort of credit for “taken its balls-up and gone home.”

Not knuckling under to Johnny Foreigner’s International Court

I reported some time back that a couple of months before 9/11, John Ashcroft took reports of terrorist threats seriously enough to stop flying commercial flights. I expected some degree of outrage, but instead the story was completely ignored. I think my original source was British, and the only attention its gotten in the American media has been in the Tom Tomorrow cartoon This Modern World.

Speaking of the media, CNN has been caving in to the Israeli government on how it reports on terrorists. This is after the local satellite company introduced Fox News & threatened to kick CNN off the air, and the Israeli gov. threatened reporters. CNN will stop reporting statements by suicide bombers (taped beforehand, obviously) and their families. Israelis have been complaining about moral equivalence in CNN reporting. Fine, let's balance out the terrorists with interviews with Israeli soldiers who bulldozed homes in Jenin with people inside (hey, I wonder how that UN inquiry is going. Oh, yeah.), or fired rockets from helicopters, etc etc. And their proud mothers as well.

Moral equivalency. Sheesh. I remember listening to the BBC in the 1980s, when Thatcher had declared IRA leaders unpersons in the media (following South African precedent), and they got some actor to dub Gerry Addams’s voice.

Since writing that, Ive seen a McNeil-Lehrer debate on the subject, in which a CNN flack talked about moral equivalency & not upsetting the families of Israeli victims of terrorist attacks. Just in case you thought of CNN as being in the news business.

Britain has been experimenting locally with loosening enforcement of marijuana laws. Headline in Daily Telegraph: Blair Under Pressure on Cannabis. And you know what could take the edge off that pressure...?

Bush looks like realizing that threatening to halt the UN peacekeeping mission in Bosnia in order to get his way on the International Court does not look good to the rest of the world. I don’t know, Bosnia occupied by soldiers from a nation which puts its own nationalistic goals ahead of international human rights standards, well at least its what they’re used to over there. Bush’s idea of a compromise would leave the court intact but give the US a permanent veto over its citizens actually having to appear before it, or to use his words, prevent them being drug in front of
it. The Unilateral States of America rides again.

The bridge & groom of that wedding party did survive, if anyone cares (the US media sure didn’t). The US media also, according to one British paper, gave far less time to this than to the one soldier in Afghanistan who got shot in the foot during a fire-fight. Moral equivalency, I guess. The US still hasn’t gotten its story straight on this one, no doubt in part because of the little detail that if the rocket was dropped by a B-52, as the original reports said, well a B-52 flies too high to be under any
threat from the anti-aircraft fire they claim it was under fire from.

Israel dismantles some settlement outposts. Empty ones. Big woop.

Note to Julius Caesar Watts: don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

Katherine Harris, known as Cruella, will be running against a border collie named Percy in the Republican primary for Congress in Sarasota. We’ll know there have been more shenanigans if it appears that cats have voted for Percy.

Norway is introducing a scheme whereby anyone stopped by the police and asked for ID or frisked will be issued a receipt. It’s to cut down on racism.

Rumsfeld wants no rush on deciding whether dropping a missile into the middle of a wedding was a good or bad thing. And the Pentagon is refusing to issue an apology. Although to be fair, the newlyweds, assuming they’re still alive, probably won’t be issuing any thank you notes for the gift.

A NY Times columnist seems very sure he knows who was behind the anthrax attacks, and all but names him in an effort to get the FBI (his informant is clearly a Fibbie) off its ass. There really has been amazingly little pressure on the agency to solve this one, compared with, say, the Jon Benet Ramsey case.

Just as historic

Jiang Zemin rebukes the government of Hong Kong for failing to keep it as rich as it was when it was handed over to China five years ago. That’s probably because Zemin had Tung too busy suppressing democracy, such as the protesters who Zemin never saw during his visit. Hong Kong has actually become less open in many ways than China is.

The head of Kabul TV is fired--except that he refuses to go, which has worked for him in the past. He banned women from tv, especially women singing.

Maybe someone should suggest to the Afghans that they stop shooting into the air to celebrate weddings, since sometimes, these days, the air shoots back.

The Telegraph explains why American intelligence agencies can't track Arab terrorists: they have no single standard on how to spell (transliterate) their names. For example in the CIA computers, Muammar Gaddafi’s name is spelled no less than 60 different ways.

The Post reports that in April we reached a milestone I had missed: the 100th innocent person released from death row since the death penalty was reinstated. Hope he got a cake. The article also says that Ashcroft has been on a major death penalty push, which was inevitable but has gone unreported up until now. He overrides his own prosecutors to insist on going for death.

I’m going to give this quote without any comment:

The Supreme Court in 1954 declared that our nation cannot have two education systems, and that was the right decision,” Bush said. “Last week, what’s notable and important is that the court declared that our nation will not accept one education system for those who can afford to send their children to a school of their choice and for those who can’t, and that’s just as historic.”

Leka Zog, the pretender to the throne of Albania and son of the last king, returns home after a life-long exile. At the airport, the police find hand grenades and other weapons, 90 of them, in his luggage.

NY Times headline: “Gore Vows More Spontaneous Campaign.” Of course, he vows this two years in advance.

Washington Post headline: “Bush Resumes Power After Test.” Really easy graders, then.

Bush speaks against the false accountancy used by WorldCom, Xerox, etc. Reached for comment, Al Gore just sighed.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of vouchers for religious schools, saying they were neutral because they went to many types of religious school, ranging from Catholic all the way to Protestant. Evidently, aiding one religion is bad but aiding a bunch of religions is good, on the venerable legal principle that two wrongs don't make a right, but three do.

Bush very very quietly signs a law granting benefits to the gay partners (and/or other survivors named by the deceased) of cops and fire-fighters killed in the line of duty. The law is called the Village People Survivors Act of 2002.

The Supreme Court also ruled in favor of expanded drug testing in schools from athletic to other competitive extracurricular activities like Spanish club, choir, Future Homemakers of America (that can't really still exist, can it?) etc. Clarence Thomas writes that the drug problem is big enough to justify interfering with privacy rights, but that places without drug problems shouldn't have to wait for it to get bad (the Bush Doctrine in practice, a preemptive War on Drugs), and that suspicion isn't required, because to require suspicion would burden unpopular groups. Much of this is premised on the theory that schools act in loco parentis, and I think any theory that treats a part of the government as if they were parents is dangerous, not to mention creepy. My advice to students: destroy this policy by making it prohibitively expensive. Drug tests cost $30-60 each, so if they're drug-testing the chess club, everybody join the chess club.

Possible the stupidest comment on the pledge of allegiance decision, by Governor Gray Davis: “With troops overseas, this is the wrong decision at the worst possible time.”

Kevin asked me, regarding the Israeli security fence, who they'd get to build it. In fact, the contractor for the first stage actually is Palestinian, according to The Times, so there.

Bush supports keeping the pledge of allegiance just as it is because it is a confirmation that we receive our rights from God. Oh good, so it has nothing to do with religion then.

The Palestinians, of course, are much less lucky. They receive their rights, if at all, from George W. Bush. I rather thought yesterday that he might have shot himself in the foot by talking about democracy for the Palestinians, when he actually meant a highly circumscribed version of democracy, where there is freedom of choice only after the really good or popular candidates are eliminated from contention--the American version of democracy (and French, German...). He seemed to have left himself the problem of what to do when the Palestinians democratically reelect Arafat. Today he made it clearer: I’ve got confidence in the Palestinians, when they understand fully what we're saying, that they'll make the right decisions. Georgie, I’ve spent years trying to figure out what the hell you're saying.

That sentence is a variation of one of the most obnoxious Bush verbal traits, describing his own wishes as a necessity for the rest of the world, as in What Saddam Hussein needs to do is...

[Note: the spell-checker on Netscape suggested that for Saddam I actually might mean “sadism” and for Hussein “hussies.”]

The pledge of allegiance decision shouldnt bother anyone much longer, since the Supreme Courts school voucher decision today should ensure that there wont be any functioning public schools in which children might be forced to recite it. Problem solved.

On the way home with my new computer (did I mention I have a new
computer?), the decision was mentioned on NPRs Market Place program, someone saying that it meant the introduction of market economics into public schools. Oh, were already there. The focus on test result numbers, inflated by fair means and foul, means the schools are already fully WorldCom’d.

Add to that the NY Supreme Court decision of this week (note to Kevin: read Bob Herbert’s NY Times column on this) allowing the state to fund schools in a way that seriously screws NYC public schools. The Courts appellate panel ruled that the state is not obligated to provide more than a minimally adequate opportunity to get a decent education. Justice Alfred Lerner wrote: Society needs workers in all levels of jobs, the majority of which may very well be low level.

Michael Moore on Politically Incorrect tonight (last show Friday) said that every day is Roger and Me now, with corporate malfeasance finally right out in the open. Of course the pro-capitalists will say that the other corporations you dont hear about are perfectly fine and upright and honest, but Ive noticed that when we hear about corps for other reasons, like when theyre associated with politicians such as Haliburton, the Carlyle Group, Ross Perots EDS, etc etc, theyre equally problematic. Heres another one: Barrick Mining, a Canadian corp on whose board George Bush Sr sits, or actually a company that Barrick bought up, which mines for gold in Tanzania. Including in a place called Bulyanhulu, where it claimed to have a mining permitactually the permit was for an area 150 miles away and Bulyanhulu was reserved for mining by self-employed local miners. So there was a dispute, and the company used bulldozers to seal the mines to stop them being occupied--with more than 50 men inside.

The Vatican--the country--bans smoking indoors. If you must smoke after diddling a choir boy, go outside.

What, like you weren’t thinking the same thing?

I listened to some of the Senate “debate,” if something can be so called when no one argues the other side, on the pledge of allegiance. I needed something in the background not requiring much attention while I backed up some files, and this certainly fit the bill. Robert Byrd called the judges “stupid,” and the level of eloquence never rose above that. Then C-SPAN’s viewers called in, and they were worse. Worse than whatever Congresscritter that was who would have said that the judges should go back to Russia, but in these days that doesn’t apply and he couldn’t think of anywhere else, so he just said they should leave the country. The amount of emotion on this is incredible, and rather makes the point of how coercive the practice of saying the pledge must be. (Although I will say that no one even commented on my refusal, much less beat me up; I took more crap for my poem in the next year’s HS literary magazine--whose editor is on this list-- satirizing the schmalz of others writing on the death of John Lennon.)

WorldCom looks like going bankrupt because of fraudulent bookkeeping. Bush chastises executives for not looking after stockholders’ interests, completely forgetting to mention the thousands of employees about to lose their jobs.

FAIR has a report about Israel’s partly successful attempts to get news organizations to stop using the word “settlement.” The preferred term is Jewish “neighborhood.” Like Mr Rogers, but with uzis.

A funny correction in the NY Times today. An editorial had said that joining us in executing the retarded were only Japan and Kyrgyzstan. Evidently they were wrong about the latter [don’t make me type that again].

A funny moment as I listened to the news about the 9th circuit banning the pledge of allegiance: I heard them say that the guy who filed the suit lived in sacramental. Turned out to be our state capital, of course. Which might suggest his next lawsuit. Well, I feel vindicated for my principled refusal to recite the thing in the 11th grade.

I was reading about an attempt to get gay marriages in New Jersey (I’m picturing two women with really big hair), and it suddenly occurred to me how deeply offended I was by Catholic marriages. I think those people’s values--su Subject: misc
bjugation of women, enforced multiple pregnancies, ham--should not be given credence by having their so-called marriages endorsed by the state.

A day later, Bush’s speech looks worse than ever, even more of an unleashing of Sharon than I’d realized. Arafat amusingly said that Bush’s words didn’t apply to him, which Bush deserved for not using his name, and that Palestinian leadership was up to the Palestinians to decide. He diplomatically failed to mention Florida or the popular vote. A Guardian writer says that it’s refreshing to hear an American president enunciate so clearly his opinion that it is up to him to pick the leaders of other countries.

Bush is completely isolated in his “Turn yourself into Sweden before giving us a call” policy. Even Tony Blair won’t lapdog for him on this one.

So between 1998 and 2001 background checks for gun purchases prevented 200,000 felons acquiring weaponry. While letting through only 9,000 felons plus 3,000 convicted of domestic violence. By government standards a good job. Why are all those felons even applying?

The Supreme Court rules against judges deciding on death-penalty sentencing, which involves findings of fact rather than law (ie, aggravating factors), which are properly determined by a jury. Can’t disagree with that, although the very next case allowed judges to determine whether someone “brandished” or merely held a gun. Consistency never being a big thing with this Court. It seems that in states with elected judges, the judges are much more likely to fry ‘em than are juries, and the reverse where judges are non-elected. No one evidently is going to question whether there are other ways in which elected judges give different results, just as no one ever asks how many innocent people are convicted of non-death-penalty offenses that we consequently never hear about, how many court-appointed lawyers sleep through trials, etc etc.

In a hilarious opening paragraph, a Washington Post article says
“Fireproofing failures--rather than the impact of the plane
crashes--probably caused the World Trade Center towers to quickly
collapse”. My, what an unfortunately coincidence!

And I won’t even mention the split infinitive.

Germany and Austria seem to be increasingly assertive in favor of the ethnic Germans expelled from Czechoslovakia after the war, and now, future German chancellor Edmund Stoiber, whose wife was an expelled Sudeten German, is saying that Poland should also let its German population back in.

Speaking of unwelcome visitors, Israel is about to unleash the dogs of war on Gaza, which is so densely packed that the death count among civilians could be much higher than in the West Bank.

Which didn’t bother Bush when he gave his speech and failed to mention it. There are good analyses by the Washington Post, in the Guardian (guardian.co.uk/worldlatest) and by William Saletan in slate.com. I’m still making up my mind. Noticeably, Bush’s plan for Middle East peace in our time involved as small an American role as possible. In fact, I think this speech was it.

He did call on Israel to stop “settlement activity,” which I assume means a freeze rather than a withdrawal, and for a pull-back of troops. This is all to the good, although the second half was undermined by other statements by him recently and by the rest of the speech. Calling for Arafat to be removed immediately after Israeli troops put him under siege again looks like endorsement of Sharon’s policy. Which it is, of course. Bush probably foresees another loya jirga, where he gets to call for democracy, but only after the US pressures anyone it doesn’t like into not running. Sharon, as the Guardian piece suggests, foresees another Bashir
Gemayel, the man he foisted on Lebanon as its “president” in 1982 after a remarkably similar invasion. Sharon wanted a force to do the dirty work while Israelis looked on, and yes, I’m talking about Sabra and Shatila again.

I could swear I heard Bush say both that Israel would have secure and recognized borders, and that Palestine would be provisional, without actual borders. How those two things are possible at once is beyond me.

Bush also quietly endorsed Sharon’s policy of witholding Palestinian funds from the Palestinian government, effectively using the money to prop up this democratic-but-not-Arafat government that will magically spring up out of nowhere. This violates international law. And Bush has to recognize that there can be no elections while Israeli soldiers are occupying the country. My favorite bit was when he inserted that Palestine has to be based on market economics. Yes, that’s what the Palestinians need, market-based incentives.

Or did he mean the market the Israelis shelled yesterday?

The new, more liberal Iran raises the minimum age for marriage to 13 for girls, 15 for boys (unless court permission is given).

Monday is International UFO Day, which is celebrated by, I’m guessing, anal probes. The highest concentration of UFO sightings in the world occur in Scotland, at .004 per square kilometer and 1 per 17,000 people. Something to do with winning Wimbledon, I believe.

Jesus is back, and boy is she pissed. A sect exists in China called Lightning from the East. One method it uses to convert people is to kidnap them, especially underground Christians and Christian missionaries, 32 of whom were just released. Evidently, Jesus has come back as a Chinese woman, age 30.

Mixed messages out of Israel as to what exactly it plans to do with all that land it says it’s going to occupy until the terrorism stops, that is, whether it will reestablish an occupation government or not. This seems a fairly important detail not to have worked out in advance. They were evidently planning to fudge it, being willing to make sure Arafat’s government can’t govern, but not willing to take responsibility by declaring it dissolved. Hopefully, the Palestinians can make sure the Israelis don’t actually resume taxing them (which was also always done in a way that violated international law), but they should start demanding services from the Israelis.

The Israeli Cabinet has just approved exiling the families of suicide bombers (and blowing up their homes, of course) to Stalag Gaza Strip. This is, of course, against international law and is defined as a war crime.

A statement from Al Qaeda warns the US to “fasten its seat belt,” as there is more terrorism coming. Evidently they’ve spent the last 9 months hiding out in the gay district of Kabul, watching Betty Davis pictures. Which should make them very dangerous indeed.

Speaking of Afghanistan, everything about the new government suggests that the US won the war but lost the peace. As I’ve said, the warlords are back in charge and the modernizers lost. The international community that was willing to blow up every wedding party and banana stand in the country is not willing to help disarm the warlords, so there cannot be a real central government. The new government is called “Islamic”; the new chief justice believes in sharia law. And most Americans will know no more about this than they do about the current governments of Grenada, Nicaragua, Panama....

Thankfully

So now every gas chamber in the country will have to have a picture of George W. Bush and the words “You have to be at least this smart to be executed.” It’s hard to get worked up about the Supreme Court decision that this week it’s unconstitutional to execute the retarded, because it should be self-evident, like the new study showing that fat people like food too much. Although the morally retarded three, Rehnquist, Thomas and Scalia, are actually probably correct that this sort of thing shouldn’t be decided by opinion polls. But then neither should it be done by counting the number of states that ban the practice, like they want, as if what legislators think is reflective of public opinion. As the last 9 months have shown, civil rights should be put beyond the immediate reach of a panicked majority anyway. Which was rather the point of having a Bill of Rights to begin with.

If you haven’t already read the dissent by Fat Tony Scalia, you simply must. It’s Archie Bunker with a law degree, on acid. It’s the tone of moral and intellectual superiority that’s amazing. Even if you believe that there’s some sort of case for executing the retarded, you should at least treat it as a regrettable necessary evil, not be so, well, joyous, at the prospect. He and Rehnquist are especially scornful of the notion of treating world opinion as having any bearing, leading to my favorite sentence in the Scalia dissent: “Equally irrelevant are the practices of the ‘world community,’ whose notions of justice are (thankfully) not always those of our people.” That “(thankfully)” is priceless.

The US just gave up its right to seize the whole of Bermuda and several other places, I think including Newfoundland, in event of an emergency, like the need for a really good tan. It was part of the Lend-Lease deal with Britain. Speaking of which, those deadbeat Brits are expecting to pay off their war debt to us by the end of 2006.

In his ongoing battle to stay to the right of, well, everybody, Tony Blair tried to get the EU to cut off aid to countries that didn’t prevent refugees fleeing to European countries or refused to take them back. The EU didn’t bite, but views on immigration keep moving to the right, and the German conservative leader, who is the only Bavarian who does not drink beer, says that immigration will be the key issue of the next German elections, so this is a wedge issue now.

On the day Israel implemented its new policy of seizing Palestinian land after bombings, Israeli troops fired a “warning shot” into a crowded market, killing 4 people, including 3 children. Therefore Israel will now have to give land back to the Palestinians. “Fair is fair,” says Ariel Sharon. The state of Israel should be the size of a postage stamp by the end of 2003.

The Observer says that the mass funerals Iraq holds for children
supposedly killed by US weapons and sanctions are a fake, although it actually sounds like the bodies in the little coffins are real, but they store them up (contrary to Islamic law and the parents’ wishes) and bring them in to Baghdad periodically for the event.

The Italian supreme court, whose rulings no one reports unless sex is involved, or possibly that is all it ever rules on, says that sexual demands of a sado-masochistic nature are grounds for divorce. Unless someone’s actually *been* a naughty boy who needs to be punished.

Headline: “Bush Declares War on Fat America.” I accept. Where do I go to get an extra-large uniform? I’m planning to do my military service by beating up a super-model. Or, to keep with a theme, by spanking a super-model.

As its part in the war, Southwest Airlines is making fat people buy two seats. One person interviewed, it sounds like they tried to sell her two non-adjacent seats. And in case you’re wondering, no extra air-miles. But I’m assuming two meals.

How many debates do you want?

Bravely marching backwards, Israel is planning to re-occupy Palestine bit by bit as a collective punishment for terrorism. Hey Ariel don’t turn the clock back too far or you may find yourself trying to sing while crossing into Switzerland.

The new Hungarian prime minister turns out to have been a spook. In the spirit of openness, he has threatened to sue any newspaper that discloses any more, because, he says, he is under legal obligation not to talk about it. Should make that lawsuit difficult then, shouldn’t it?

Also threatening to sue is John Gotti Jr. With the interest in his father’s death, Uncle Junior is worried that memorabilia will be sold without him getting a piece of the action. This is what we call a copyright protection racket.

Karzai names his cabinet and sort of submits it to the loya jirga, not for individual vote, or indeed any vote, except by hands, since if votes were actually recorded, he’d have been voted down. Nor did he allow discussion (I’ve been meaning to mention that every time the former king tried to address the nation, the tv transmitter suddenly cut out--three times, and that when the only other candidate for president, a woman, tried to speak to the assembly, Karzai bounced onto the stage and cut her off. Which is an improvement over the old Afghanistan, in which he would have cut off one of her body parts.), saying “There was debate. I told them do you agree? And they said yes. How many debates do you want.” Say what you will, his democratic instincts are at least superior to Dubya’s.

As I understand it, the new cabinet is considered a failure because it doesn’t contain enough warlords with blood on their hands. Really. Karzai asked them all to join, but they refused, preferring their regional fiefs, calculating that Kabul will not have any power worth mentioning.

Headline: “Spam Museum Set to Open in Minnesota.” Hey, I’ve got news for you: the entire state of Minnesota is a spam museum.

Interesting but semi-comprehensible piece in Salon on the recent expansion of the FBI’s phone-tapping capabilities. It seems that as of the end of this month it will have access to more information than before (they’re using the increase in digital over analog technologies to quietly acquire much more data while pretending it’s the same thing as the old pen taps), despite it’s previous attempt having lost in court. This time it did it the old fashioned way, through bribery. Seems Congress appropriated $500 million to help phone companies make changes under the US Patriot Act, but left disbursement up to the FBI, which used it to leverage deals with phone companies giving it information the court had ruled it couldn’t have.

The Hindu nationalist ruling party of India will nominate as the next president (which makes him a certainty) a Muslim. The guy who was in charge of the nuclear bomb program, who has no political experience, but the office doesn’t really require it. Presumably his designing a weapon to kill lots of Muslims makes up for him actually being one, like Werner von Braun (if you don’t get that reference, feel free to call up Kevin, who will be happy to sing you the song).

The NY Times says that Pakistan is holding American citizens, and has US permission not to check their identities too quickly, to give them more time to torture information out of them. I believe I said some time ago that most of the torturing was going to be sub-contracted, and so it has proved.

The Supreme Court rules 6-3 that it’s ok for cops boarding buses to conduct random searches not to tell people that they have a right to refuse. Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, entirely from the perspective of non-criminals, who are always happy to cooperate with the police for their own safety and for the safety of others, and so certainly don’t feel coerced. Hell, in San Francisco guys go up to cops all the time and ask to be searched, purely in the interests of public safety, but maybe that’s not what Kennedy had in mind. Now anyone with the brains god gave gravel understands that someone concealing cocaine, as in this case, would only
have allowed a search if he did in fact feel coerced and/or did not know his rights. Since the decision was not about the searches themselves, it was only about whether cops are permitted to conceal the lack of a legal mandate for their actions, to actively deceive people. And now the Supes are in collusion with this deception, because really why should it ever decide against informing people of their rights--if only just to be safe? Why would it ever be a good thing for people not to know their rights?

Condoleezza Rice says the Palestinian government is “corrupt and cavorts with terror.”

Cavorts?

Many Israelis are taking out papers for a backup citizenship in case they want to get out quick. Germany.

Which is in the process of raising the minimum age for gun ownership from 18 to 21.

Bush is talking about “interim” Palestinian statehood. Without actual borders or anything concrete on paper. Talk about declaring peace and going home.

In their respective parliamentary elections today, the Czech Republic moved nicely to the left, but France to the right, although not the far right--Le Pen’s National Front looks like ending up with zero seats. The fear of fascism disappeared awfully quickly in France, and the elections had a very low turnout (though still above American standards, of course), indicating that once the initial threat was over, no one made any attempts to engage the French public with the political system. Once again, apathy is the political elite’s friend, and everybody please go back to sleep again, nothing to see here....

Israel will make it much harder for Palestinians in the Occupied
Territories who are married to Palestinians (or presumably to Jews?) in Israel to get residency permits. For now, they have frozen new family reunifications, and will sextuple the fee. Israelis (and I should say Israeli Jews, or perhaps Israeli fascists, since it’s a bad habit to refer to Israeli Jews as Israelis, as I told my 4th grade teacher during the 1973 war) are worried about demographics for obvious reasons. And for some reason the number of new immigrants under the Law of Return is way down--and the majority of those aren’t even real Jews.

William Webster, former head of both the CIA & the FBI (which means he’s not even supposed to talk to himself) wants Al Qaeda POWs injected with truth serum. This assumes that they aren’t doing that, or worse, now. I trust no one who reads the article in the Sunday NY Times that contained that tidbit really believes that questioning consists solely of good cop-bad cop and mind games. Given--I say again--that the progress and consequences of the hunger strike begun in Guantanamo 2 1/2 months ago have not been reported, nor is there any indication that any reporter or Congresscritter in the whole country gives a shit, much less the people at large, the only thing preventing torture is the goodness and purity of heart of the CIA/FBI interregators and Marine guards. Good luck, guys, hope none of you are innocent. This country manages to execute innocent people after trials, with lawyers and all the trimmings, and appeals and such, as opposed to being swept up by random military patrols--god knows we blew up a lot of convoys and wedding parties and friendly forces and arms dumps that weren’t what we thought they were--so, um, good luck, you’ll need it.

A story that I may have sent a couple of months back, probably in the Stop the Week section of the London Sunday Times that I used to send, before Rupert Murdoch got greedier and started charging for access, was that the Poetry Society had forgotten to renew their website URL and lost it to a Hong Kong company which sells online gambling and impotence cures--and URL’s back to their original owners. The New Statesman ran a competition asking for famous poets on the subject. Here’s one entry:

Cyber-Tiger, virtual blight,
With your online gambling site,
What e-portal, bland or sly,
Could claim domain o’er poetry?

Who, in odists’ dotcom guise,
Peddles cream for flaky thighs?
And, when our manhood’s in retreat,
Flogs us handy Groin-Deep-Heat? .....

Kaliningrad looks like being a problem. A non-contiguous part of Russia, Lithuania and Poland plan to make residents get visas if they want to go to the rest of Russia. It could just be a minor irritant in relations, or it could be the next Danzig Corridor.

The US is screwing with the prosecutors at the war crimes trial of Slobby Milosevic, who want Richard Holbrook to testify and are being held up by endless State Dept negotiations. If they wind up not calling him, Milosevic will, so this isn’t going away.

Speaking of trials, that of Moussaui, or however you spell it--I’d get the newspaper to look it up, but there’s a cat in my lap--will require information in the possession of the Germans. The problem is that they aren’t, like most Europeans, supposed to assist death-penalty cases. Unfortunately, they look like they’re going to fudge it, asking for a statement that their evidence wouldn’t actually contribute to the death penalty.

Speaking of evidence, in my email of last Sept. 19, I asked whether the standard of proof Bush used to link bin Laden and 9/11 was the same really high standard he would require to admit that global warming existed or arsenic in the drinking water was bad, or the low standard under which he was convinced that Star Wars would work. And you’ll note they still haven’t adduced any convincing evidence of bin Laden’s guilt. But my point today is that there has been a recent rash of alarming claims backed up by nothing. Not just dirty bombs and apartment bombing threats, but
the crap Rumsfeld is throwing around every day. Iran is harboring Al Qaeda (by the way, a second unmanned spy plane in as many months just crashed in Iran). Iran is developing missiles. Al Qaeda is operating in Kashmir (his handlers took this one back). All with no evidence. The Guardian calls him a clumsy loudmouth. Yup, but the American press still regard that, inexplicably, as charm.

One sad consequence of the Israeli invasions of Jericho and tighter border controls is the closing of the casino there (you’ll remember I announced its opening a year or two back saying that if the Palestinians were only allowed a reservation, they were entitled to act like it). But the Jews evidently have a real taste for gambling, and will soon do so over Israel in a plane. Oh, and they’re also betting on the location of the next
suicide bombing.

Bob Barr, he of the world’s creepiest mustache, is suing Bill Clinton, James Carville and Larry Flynt, for a conspiracy to expose his adultery during the Clinton impeachment, thus causing him, oh, $30 million worth of emotional distress. Elsewhere, he is sponsoring legislation to cut down on frivolous lawsuits.

Imperial presidency

Look at the list of stories in the nation & politics section of the Wed. Washington Post. Collectively, they show the expanding powers of the presidency: a man held without trial or lawyer for 8 months, treaties abandoned without Congress being consulted, and the decision to stop telling Congress, which I thought was given the power of the purse by the Constitution, anything about Star Wars expenditures, and an attempt to censor a book, in which the theory is argued in court that the executive’s decision to classify information is unreviewable by courts. Chimp Boy thinks he’s king.

Favorite moment of the farce that is the loya jirga: today, Karzai declared himself elected president by the body, and then had to admit that there hadn’t actually been a vote yet. The US has put god knows what sort of pressure on every rival candidate to drop out, so the election will actually be between Karzai and a woman. I don’t honestly know why we’re even pretending, since even less legitimacy could be granted by this body than by Zimbabwe’s last elections. Colin Powell denied that the US had exerted “undue influence,” but didn’t define what influence he considered to be due the US.

A detail I missed in yesterday’s email: the “treatment” program for sex offenders not only required its unwilling participants to confess to crimes for which they had not been taught, but then polygraphed them.

The European Parliament has voted to ban the import (phased in over ten years) of cosmetics which have been tested on animals. Such testing is illegal in most EU countries, but required in the US. We’ll see if the US dares start a trade war over this.

Favorite headline of the day: Senator Helms Moves to Rehabilitation. Presumably at the Betty Ford Center for Recovering Assholes. I believe he received a pig heart, which is too good and fitting a story to ruin by checking the facts, so I won’t.

Oh, driving on I5 I passed an old VW wagon filled with college signs, with a cardboard sign in the rear window saying “Show Us Your Tits.” I thought about it, but in the end failed to comply.

Second favorite headline of the day: Cabbage Machine Crushes Man to Death. And cuts off another guy’s arm. It’s not every day someone dies in the cause of cole slaw.

An even better death (hey, I had to drive 400 miles listening to the radio whitter on about dirty bombs, I deserve a little gruesome entertainment) was that of Peter Mokaba, one of South Africa’s “There is no such thing as AIDS” brigade. I don’t think I have to tell you what he died of.

So what *really* happened at the loya jirga today? The whole thing always seemed like a way to broker deals under the spurious guise of “tradition,” instead of the usual spurious guise of rigged elections. But the self-selected body really wanted the king back, and the Americans stepped in to, what, bribe? threaten? him into refusing any part, thus ensuring (helped along by the occasional assassination and assassination attempt by the CIA) that the US’s puppet government continues another term of puppetry.

The Washington Post Monday caught up with the Bush Doctrine, which I mentioned a few days ago. No longer will we be able to complain about Pearl Harbors and cowardly sneak attacks. Those will be ours. The Bushies are now trying to sell NATO, sort of. The sort of is that they’re claiming preemptive attacks aren’t explicitly ruled out by the NATO charter, so they must already be NATO policy. In the 17th century and beyond, various European countries had sumptuary laws, which said what clothes certain classes were and were not allowed to wear, the idea being that social class should be visible at all times. The Bush Doctrine proclaims the same sort of thing for certain weapons. Especially symbolic of this is that they are trying to develop small nuclear devices to destroy well-protected, dug-in weapons of mass destruction. Rumsfeld has told NATO that the standard of proof need not be very high, either, before an attack is launched.

The UN World Summit on Food is meeting in Rome to discuss world hunger. They are too embarrassed even to vote on whether there is a “right to food.” The delegates were, of course, well fed (the menu may be found in the London Times article on the story), although those from the richer countries didn’t dare show up at the banquet.

The Tuesday Post has a piece that wonders how the US will deal with armies containing conscripted 12-year olds, as so many do.

A guy shot up a Benedictine monastery today, killing two monks. The Church wanted to know if the guy was a priest, because they’re allowed one atrocity or child-rape free under the Two Tykes and You’re Out policy.

The Supreme Court rules 5-4 that prisons can punish convicted sex
offenders who refuse to admit guilt during therapy. I think mandating therapy is already a violation of their 1st Amendment rights, but that issue doesn’t even seem to have come up. Instead the Supes astonishingly saw no violation of the 5th Amendment in a requirement that a prisoner sign an “admission of guilt” form and, oh yes, list all his victims. The punishments involved seem to include going into maximum security and taking away his tv, but you know that some states must be keeping prisoners in jail for more of their terms. So it’s not just “terrorists” who have no rights in the US.

And note that Bush was able to remove all the rights of an American citizen unconvicted of any crime (the dirty nuke guy), including the right to see an attorney, or to any form of trial whatever, simply by signing a piece of paper. Just the way to treat someone who hates liberty, I say!

I haven’t decided whether to take the whole dirty bomb thing seriously or not.

So why wasn’t the ATF included in the Heimat Security Fiefdom, even though it was key in breaking the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and involved in Oklahoma City and other terrorist investigations? Think it’s part of Ashcroft’s campaign to make sure that no information on gun ownership is ever used for law enforcement purposes? Me too.

The Interior Department is buying out, for $235 million, offshore oil & gas leases off the Florida coast but refused to do same for California. Not for political reasons, but because, evidently, California is not opposed to offshore drilling like Florida is. At least that’s what the Interior Dept says.

A website offers pictures of women, excuse me, “homicide mothers”, at abortion clinics.

The Sunday Chronicle has a section on the FBI’s relationship with Reagan when he was governor, and their mutual attempt to wipe out the UC system. Not to be missed. www.sfgate.com/campus

The House has voted to kill the estate tax. Unfortunately, when the estate tax’s will was then read, it turned out that it had willed us all a major increase in the deficit.

The California Supreme Court (finally a California story worth passing on, after a week and a half of reading the LA Times--unless you want to know about Valley secession, which has pit brother against brother, surfer dude against Valley girl, all very Ken Burnsian) grants both paternity and custody to a guy who is not the kid’s biological father or even married to the mother, but acted as the kid’s father. Advocates of gay adoption see this as a great victory, although biology has always been secondary in establishing parenthood under the law. The British are talking about a law to prevent “fathers” DNA-testing their putative children.

Speaking of British parenting, the joke I’ve been meaning to send for a week: at the Royal Jubilee, it had been announced that the Queen would go on stage to sing All You Need is Love with Paul McCartney. This did not happen, presumably because he was unwilling to rewrite the lyrics, like Elton John did with that Diana song, to All You Need is Repressed, Unexpressed, Horribly Awkward Love.

Bush’s solution to the problem of bureaucratic infighting among the intelligence agencies is to create another bureaucracy. Who say’s he’s a Washington outsider?

It wouldn’t even resolve the problem of the infighting, just create a new body for the FBI and CIA to stonewall.

Of course if you over-centralize intelligence, it leaves it open to moles, as we know from John Le Carre’s Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy.

In 2000 there were only 16 children put up for adoption in Sweden. How?

Ah, rich Republicans. Mitt Romney, candidate for governor in Mass., actually claims that his primary residence is in Utah, in order to save on his taxes. The funny part, for a Republican running in Taxacheussets, is that the taxes are Utah property taxes.

Bush on the EPA’s report acknowledging the existence of global warming: “I read the report put out by the bureaucracy.” My, the contempt just drips from his tongue, doesn’t it? Oh, and he didn’t so much read it as color it in.

There’s a piece in today’s NY Times op-ed section on why the whistle-blowers at the FBI and Enron were women. Basically, it was because women have no insider status and found that they could only change their workplace by going outside it. The author: Anita Hill.

Long to reign over us

Hard to get any sense out of the British papers today, given the Jubilee celebrations. The Queen was wearing a stunning ensemble from the Dowdy Matron collection, circa 1955. My fellow cultural historians will have a field day in future generations explaining Dame Edna Everidge and Ozzy Osbourne’s prominence. God forbid they should celebrate with excerpts from Shakespeare or, I don’t know, Upstairs Downstairs.

Speaking of the fear of high culture, TNT just ran a version of King Lear transposed to the Old West (haven’t seen it yet) with Patrick Stewart. Notably, in their commercials for it, they didn’t mention Lear or Shakespeare.

A court in India makes illegal any assembly of 4 or more pigs. Cows, meanwhile, do whatever they like. Can’t we all just get along?

A girl in England has been excused from school because she bursts into tears every time she sees a school uniform. She has been diagnosed with “school phobia.” Of course when a middle-aged Tory bursts into tears when he sees a school uniform, it’s something else entirely.

A couple of Salvadoran military chiefs look to go on trial in Florida for atrocities committed in the early 1980s. Two more war criminals I didn’t know had been given asylum. I’m not sure what they’ve been doing while here. You’ll remember that the guy who shot the Vietcong captive in the head in the most famous photo from the Vietnam war owned a pizza shop in Virginia.

Arafat overrules a court to keep in jail someone Israel has ordered him to keep in jail, and fuck the rule of law. Actually, the NY Times quotes a Clinton staffer as saying that their policy in such cases was “I don’t think we really cared about due process.” Hey, no kidding. As I’ve been saying, the US policy re Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Philippines, etc has been that “terrorists” should be kept in jail, no “revolving door,” but not actually ever put on trial.

In a drug store yesterday, saw the most disgusting sign ever: “Assorted incontinence on clearance.”

Some of the Pacific Coast Highway is now the American Veterans of the Vietnam War Memorial Highway. ‘Cause you never know when PCH is just gonna SNAP.

Saw my opthamologist yesterday. She told me I have a hernia.

See William Safire’s column in the Monday NY Times castigating the FBI’s assumption of new powers. Or better yet, don’t, so that I can use his phrase “Congressional undersight,” and you’ll think I invented it.

I said within a couple of days of 9/11 that the hijackers didn’t require anywhere near the level of organization that everyone was saying. But I didn’t realize they were actually complete idiots. Various terrorist types were all using the same cell phone; some of the hijackers had previously done a milk run flight all together, breaking the basic security of keeping cells separate from each other, which any 8-year old knows. The point being that not only should the FBI and CIA have been talking to each other and to others (I like that the State Dept routinely renewed visas of people known to the CIA, which hadn’t told anyone to watch out for them), but that the whole network could rather easily have been rolled up.

There is finally a Bush Doctrine, not that anyone was paying much
attention: first strike, preemptive action against countries that haven’t actually done anything, but are lookin’ at us funny. Which is a legitimate defense in a Texas court.

The Cal. legislature buries the bill to ban Indian mascots at public schools. It was a tough choice, really: perpetuate Indian stereotypes or California PC stereotypes.

The FBI has finally decided that what it really needs in the war on terrorism is more power. There’s a surprise. On Tuesday they announced new powers for the central hq of the FBI. On Wednesday, more powers for agents in the field. Next up: janitors will be able to strip search any celebrity they want, at random (the janitors have an even better union than the field agents). Does anyone really believe that the FBI wasn’t able to surf the internet?

PETA has been fighting off the infiltration and counter-intelligence operations of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey. When the circuses have their own secret agents, you know you’re in trouble.

Some days, life hands you the perfect straight line. In this case, it was a business news report that McDonald’s was going to start selling “non-food items.”

Denmark pulls in the welcome mat, enacting an extraordinarily tight immigration law. This is in part thanks to the presence of a racist party in the new coalition government, but I wouldn’t absolve the rest of the government. For example, did anyone in the cabinet rebuke the leader of the Danish People’s Party for saying that Muslims have a taste for mass rape?

Britain is similarly moving to an instant-deportation system for those rejected for political asylum. On the other hand, they do now have the first ever black cabinet minister.

The Bush administration decided that the way to deal with failing Indian reservation schools run by the BIA was to privatize them, but stepped back after the obvious protests.

Colin Powell was on McNeil-Lehrer yesterday threatening India or Pakistan with worldwide condemnation if they start a nuclear war. Right, they’re not afraid of having Delhi or Islamabad hiroshimaed, but they’re terrified of “worldwide condemnation.”

Ever wonder where your old computers go when you throw them out? The answer was China, where these and other highly dangerous electronic components (“e-waste”) are stripped by little children without protective gear, and the drinking water polluted. Actually, China just banned the import of such products. The US is the only industrial country which didn’t sign up to a 1989 convention against exporting hazardous waste.

Speaking of which, Zimbabwe, though on the brink of starvation thanks to being run by an idiot, has refused an offer from the US of $9 million worth of maize, because the US would not certify that it wasn’t genetically modified.

Drano

Before going in to meet Pootie-Poot, Bush spit out his gum into his hand. The image led every Russian news report.

At a Russian university, somebody asked him about the brain drain. Bush’s response: “It’s gonna take a lotta brains in Russia to create a drain.”

Colombia, which is Spanish for “Vietnam, but with better drugs,” just elected the right-wing-death-squad candidate president. He’s promising to kill lots of guerillas, and to do it with lots of American money.

Amusing reading of the week: the British embassy in Japan has issued a pamphlet on how to deal with English football fans--serve beer in plastic cups, messages in English on how to sort their garbage, learn a few English phrases like Hello and England are a very good team. “You might be afraid of their big bodies and large numbers....” (found at guardian.co.uk/worldlatest)

A couple of days ago, Bush said that Cuba was like a prison, with no civil rights. As opposed to the part of the island the US occupies.

An Israeli astronaut, the first, is going into space in, um, July I think. He has requested the Kosher meal. Tang and gefilte fish.

A lot of Russia’s criminals are orphans, and there are many orphans because life expectancy is so low now. But one boy was lucky. A couple took him from the orphanage. Unfortunately, they also made him clean his room. He’s 12, by the way. He didn’t like having to clean his room. Fortunately, he knew some criminals. From the orphanage. So he arranged a hit.

When the pope was in Bulgaria, he brought a present. A piece of Pope John XXIII (who was once a priest in Sofia). They won’t say what part. The Guardian story said that if anyone else got on a plane with a body part in his luggage, he might be in some trouble. If you’re a pope, evidently that’s considered normal behaviour.

You probably missed it, but there was a threat of invasion against Pakistan this week because it’s harboring terrorists. The threat came from General John Keane, #2 in the US Army. Fortunately, the Ghauri missile they tested today can’t reach the US (it’s named after a 12th Century warlord type who beat the shit out of some Indians). By the way, Pakistan evidently has many more nukes than we realized, thanks to a crash program to produce weapons-grade uranium. I don’t think westerners realize how ready both sides are to use their nukes. For a start, these are not world-ending weapons. They’re mostly only about 15 kilotons, which is enough to destroy Hiroshima but not enough to set off nuclear winter. They are, in a word, usable. And they’re five minutes away from their targets, which creates a lot of incentives to shoot first when that sparrow sets off your radar.

One last joke about Bush’s speech at the Reichstag: He called terrorism the new totalitarian threat, at which point half the deputies thought: I knew Adolf Hitler, Adolf Hitler was a friend of mine....

Women wishing to join the Indonesian military must pass a virginity test.

In Moscow, Dubya and Pootie-Poot sign the new treaty, which finally has a name (although I believe both sides have their own name for it, which is what happens when you don’t negotiate long enough): the Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty. Yes, it’s SORT of a treaty. That should be easy to remember, and to make it easier, before long it’ll be the only acronym you need to know. In 3 weeks the US will renounce the ABM Treaty, and Russia will declare Start II dead in response.

Which reminds me: if you were the leader of a country in danger of nuclear warfare, what would you do to reduce tensions? If you answered, announce a missile test, then your name must be Musharaf, because no one else is that stupid.

Bill Clinton has been in China giving a speech on “The World Trade Organization and the Chinese Real Estate Economy.” Except it wasn’t, because he didn’t do any homework for it, so he just rambled on for 30 minutes about the time he visited China in 1998 and whatnot, and then collected his check for $250,000. Jeez, I hope Carter at least came back from Cuba with a few smuggled Havanas for his trouble.

The Israeli plan to turn the West Bank into not one but eight giant prison camps proceeds apace. Trucks will not be allowed to travel between them, so goods will have to be unloaded and change trucks, for no very good reason except to destroy the Palestinian economy. And Palestinians with Palestinian papers or, amazingly enough, from East Jerusalem, will not be allowed into Israel, nor Israeli Palestinians into Palestine.

The FBI may not have been able to detect terrorism, but it did root out yet more traitors within the Bureau itself, punishing those agents who passed information to the Enemy--the Central Intelligence Agency. The one good piece of news out of all this is that the FBI failed in its attempt to get a warrant to tap Moussaoui. I’d heard that those requests were never ever rejected.

Drooling in the Vatican, drivel in Berlin

The NY Times today informs us that the pope cannot always control his saliva and that aides have to wipe it for him. Ok, but here’s the thing: there must have been great competition for that job.

In case you’re not paying attention, India and Pakistan have 1 million soldiers facing each other (and Britain is still selling them weapons, don’t know about the US). And both sides are too stupid to back down.

Bush gives a speech at the Reichstag. And unlike JFK, he really is a jelly donut. He said “We are defending civilization itself.” Just don’t ask him to spell it (although to be fair, the London Times spelled it with an “s”). He said this is in the capital of civilization for the last century, Berlin. He said that 9/11 was a dividing line as sharp and clear as Pearl Harbor. Which is probably his way of reminding the Europeans just how late the US entered the Second World War. Of maybe he thinks the war actually started on September 7th, 1941 (the day his father thought Pearl Harbor was). He sought to allay fears of an Iraq invasion: “I have no war plans on my desk.” So what do you think he does have on his desk? An electric train set? A collection of Spider-Man comics? A case of tequila?

Kudos to Jesse Ventura, for vetoing making the pledge of allegiance mandatory in schools.

Last night was another edition of Celebrity Boxing, which again I did not watch, although I understand that Horshack risked his new nose. Call me when it’s Jesse Ventura against Gary Condit.

The Washington Post headline of a study reported in the Journal of the Bleeding Obvious: “Uninsured Don’t Get Needed Health Care.”

In today’s NY Times, an unnamed spokesman, questioned about the failure to raise the Tom Ridge Color of the Day from yellow to orange, says “There is a certain art to this.” Let me help you out, chuckles: you add red to the yellow to make orange.

The FBI agent who wrote the Phoenix memo is the guy who was instrumental in breaking the Oklahoma city bombing.

Let me correct the NY Times, which says that Ariel Sharon threw the Shas Party out of government because he plans to reduce subsidies to families with more than two children (the paper helpfully adds that devout Jews have many many children) (I added the second “many”). Actually, he planned to reduce subsidies to families with many many children who duck military service, like many devout Jews do. Also, interestingly enough, Sharon plans to cut subsidies to settlers.

I said the US should apologize to East Timor. It seems what it’s actually been doing since Bush got into office is trying to screw Timor. Should have known: it’s got oil. Now the UN administration that’s been overseeing the place for the last 3 years has been re-negotiating the sweetheart energy contracts the Indonesians had. Which means the UN was negotiating with one of its members, Australia, which is a bit odd; also, they really should have left this, which more than anything determines the future of the country, to the post-independence government. One of the oil companies is Phillips Petroleum. Anyway, some Aussies met Dick Cheney, who started putting pressure on the Timorese. Also, Colin Powell put further pressure on them to sign a document refusing to accuse any Americans in the new international tribunal, presumably UN peacekeepers--except there are none from the US--so possibly protecting Henry Kissinger and, remind me again, who was the Director of Central Intelligence at the time?

Blame

In environmental news, the Japanese failed to overturn the ban on whaling, so they’ll just have to keep breaking it.

In other environmental news, Britain opens the first cow-shit-fired power station.

Bush should have greeted the independence of East Timor with a hearty apology for the US giving a green light to Indonesia to invade in 1975, but .... say, 1975, wasn’t his dad in charge of the CIA in 1975?

Britain legalizes adoption by gay couples, as couples, and other unmarried couples together for 2 years or longer.

Followup: the guy sent to jail for stealing golf balls has had his sentence over-turned.

Bush’s nickname for Vladimir Putin is Pootie-Poot. We are governed by a five-year old, folks. I have a theory about W. Remember Tom Hanks in “Big”?

Condi Rice said that the warning Bush got on 8/6/01 was vague and only 1 1/2 pages. Whose fault is that? Bush made it clear early on that he didn’t want to be given any report longer than 2 pages.

The first head we need on a platter over this is John Ashcroft’s. His sole interest was the drug war, including, you’ll remember, raids on medical marijuana farms in California. For example, he sent up a proposal to Bush, on Sept. 10, calling for increases in the funding of 68 programs, none of them counter-terrorism. Being briefed by outgoing FBI Director Louis Freeh, he didn’t want to hear a thing about that subject. And he sent a memo to department heads, I think also Sept 10, listing his top priorities, none of which were terrorism. However in July, he did take action on threat assessments: he stopped flying commercial airliners and started taking chartered private jets.

Everyone in the admin had higher priorities. You’ll remmeber that Ashcroft’s pro-gun fanaticism was such that he had records destroyed after 9/11 that might have helped in tracking terrorists. And Treasury Sec Paul O’Neill hampered efforts to track terrorist money by his concern to help his friends by stopping efforts to stop money laundering and tax havens. Donald Rumsfeld refused to shift budget monies from his beloved Star Wars to anti-terrorism, and evidently stopped flights by the CIA Predator spy-plane started under Clinton to try to track Bin Laden---because of a turf war between the Pentagon and the CIA.

You’ll notice that with all the Bushie efforts to scare us this week, the Tom Ridge Color of the Day hasn’t moved off yellow.

Speaking of colors, did you know that carrots weren’t orange until the 16th century? It was an ideological thing in the Netherlands. Someone is now selling purple carrots, the way God intended.

I could make a joke about Stephen Jay Gould here, but I won’t.

One point about the pre-9/11 intelligence failures is that the Bushies have been insisting that to fight terrorism properly they needed to rip up the Constitution, but in fact they had about as much evidence as they really required well before they started pissing on the Bill of Rights.

Dick Cheney warns that there could be another terrorist attack any second. Well that would certainly distract the media from past intelligent failures, wouldn’t it? And if someone else makes that comment, he can just say that the opposition complains when they withhold vague warnings, and when they make them. Win win, isn’t it?

It occurred to me that the attempt by the Catholic church to blame everything on those darned homosexuals is sort of a step forward, in that it has to contain an acknowledgement of homosexuality as a sexual orientation rather than a mental disorder. What would be interesting is a definitive statement of church policy as to what exactly paedophilia is. I’m increasingly inclined to think of it as a sexual orientation, which is highly problematic in terms of how you deal with it. It’s too bad that the church, while espousing celibacy for priests, evidently knows nothing about how to keep people celibate, since that would be useful for paedophiles.

Sinn Fein wins 5 seats in the Irish parliament, including 2
former IRA leaders/gunrunners.

Israel is busily cantonizing the West Bank, turning it into 8 little bantustans, requiring Israeli permits to move between them.

Good article in the Guardian by Madeleine Bunting (www.guardian.co.uk/columnists) on the failure of military operations in Afghanistan.

Some British ramblers have failed in court to establish a right of way in Sussex that would have allowed ramblers to see some beautiful natural sights. It would have gone through a nudist camp. Nice try.

If you have #10,000 to spare, you can buy H G Wells’s copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. He drew dirty pictures in the margins.

US troops arrive in yet another country, Soviet Georgia, in order to protect terrorists. Seriously. Georgia harbors Chechens it’s unwilling to do anything about, and this mission seems to be our way of telling Russia not to invade because Georgia is our colony now.

At the detention facilities of the war crimes tribunal, Milosevic is best man at another prisoner’s wedding. Somehow, even in a group of Serb war criminals, I doubt that Milosevic is the best man.

So what do I think should go in the World Trade Center site? How about a pillory? We lock the directors of the CIA and FBI and, oh, Condaleeza Rice, in stocks and everyone gets to throw fruit at them. Good for the NY street vendors, good for tourism, infinitely less destructive than bombing Kabul.

A NY Times columnist makes the case that whatever Al Qaeda were up to, it was never going to be simple hijacking, which was not their style at all. And that’s even without the advanced warning it now seems we had from multiple sources dating back to 1996 (to say nothing of the original attack on the World Trade Center: if there’s one thing that Dubya understands--just ask Iraq--it’s that simmering resentment about the big one that got away). I’ve heard asked several times, But what could we have done differently if the warnings had been made public? There’s an answer to that which is not only obvious (so why has no one but me come up with it?)(or maybe someone is sending a letter to the Times right now--my flight Simulator joke turned up in today’s paper), it actually happened: the Pennsylvania plane. The passengers crashed the plane once they had figured out what was going on--might not the pilots, crew and passengers of the other planes have done so, too, had they had advanced warning? A second obvious answer is, if a warning had been made, maybe they’d have cancelled or postponed the attack, giving the FBI time to catch them. That answer also hasn’t appeared anywhere.

Ari Fleischer, speaking for the American people, says “They will welcome an inquiry if it’s free from politics, led by the responsible experts, and the determinations of what should be looked into are made on the basis of intelligence analysis and not political considerations.” In other words, let the same bozos at the FBI and CIA who originally fucked up determine the lines of inquiry.

And Laura Bush is wheeled out to say: “I think it is very said that people would play upon the victims’ families’ emotions, or all Americans’ emotions.” You mean the way you just did, Laura? Another candidate for the pillory.

Speaking of leaving cover-ups, I mean inquiries, to the responsible experts, only the NY Times seems to have had the story of an article by a Vatican lawyer, obviously vetted by his bosses, trying to prevent inquiries into paedophile priests spread from the US. He says that bishops shouldn’t give any information to secular authorities, shouldn’t force psychological testing on the priests, and should continue to transfer them without staining their good names [yes, in those words] by informing the new parish.

US military aid to Indonesia is about to resume, at midnight Sunday, when East Timor becomes independent.

Kaiser Permanente, which is so evil that its executives all dress as Darth Vader except that the helmet has a spike at the top (get it, Kaiser, German helmet, get it?), had a policy of paying its telephone clerks bonuses based on how quickly they got off the phone with sick people, and how few appointments with doctors they scheduled. TELEPHONE CLERKS!

The Russians are crowing over having assassinated a Chechen warlord, which they did by sending him a letter. Laced with poison. It’s nice to see the KGB up and running again, isn’t it?

If you go into the woods today: Economic conferences are no longer held in cities, at the request of the local McDonald’s and Starbuck’s franchises, I believe. So the G8 is due to meet in the Canadian Rockies. Only they just realized that it was the start of the grizzly bear hunting season--that is, hunting *by* the grizzlies. Secret services are a little nervous.

Gerhard Schroeder successfully defends his crown, as a German court rules that his hair really is that color.

Jimmy Carter and the White House agree that Castro won’t let dissidents speak out.

On a completely unrelated matter, Dick Cheney warns Democrats not to question the government’s handling of 9/11. It is irresponsible in a time of war, he says, and calls it “incendiary,” perhaps not the best choice of words. In a second day of spin rather than truth-telling, Bush, who came in second in the last election, says that Washington is a place where second guessing has become second nature. He is actually annoyed that people are upset by his cover-up. Bush: “Had I known that the enemy was going to use aeroplanes [I copied this from the London Times] to kill on that fateful morning, I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people.” Ah, so he needed to know the exact day, the exact time of day, and the exact method of attack before he could do anything. It seems that FBI agents were predicting that planes could be crashed into buidlings, so it wasn’t quite as unimaginable as the White House was claiming yesterday. Hell, has Ari Fleischer never played Flight Simulator? I’ve personally crashed an aeroplane into the Sears Tower on more than one occasion.

Lithuania scraps its requirement that women get gynaecological exams before being issued drivers’ licenses.

The results of the Dutch elections sucked, as predicted, and the anti-immigrant Insert Pun-Based-on-Fortuyn-Here Party will join the next government. One immediate result: the next German chancellor came out in favor of curbing immigration and preventing Turkey joining the EU. He says immigrants must start integrating. You know, eating sausage, invading Poland, that sort of thing.

The outgoing German chancellor, Gerhard “No chance in hell” Schroder, is now pissed at Stern magazine for running a faked picture of him naked but for a figleaf. Given that his other big concern is newspapers saying he dyes his hair, I presume this is because the figleaf prevented the German public seeing if the carpet matched the drapes.

I’ve just disgusted myself.

As I mentioned before, the British hailed Operation Snipe as a success despite failing to find a single enemy. It also turned out that those caves full of munitions they blew up belonged to one of the “good” warlords.

Finally, Bush’s horrible horrible screw-up (snort, giggle giggle). OK, we knew 9/11 was a horrendous intelligence failure. Right now I’m actually more pissed off at Congress, which after 9/11 completely failed to investigate that failure, and hence 9 months later didn’t know that there was advanced warning. The analogies to Pearl Harbor just keep getting more apt, don’t they? What will really hurt Bush was the cover-up. The line that they only thought there would be regular hijackings, which was all they had today, seems particularly inept, since they don’t seem to have done anything to prevent those either, and if they had, it would obviously have stopped what actually happened. The airlines deny ever having received the warning the Bushies are claiming they put out. And what makes it look worse, Bush got the warning while he was on vacation, and perhaps paying less attention than usual. I’m going to enjoy this.

The Japanese are literally preparing for an invasion. English football fans, for next month’s round of the World Cup at which England will be eliminated. They’re very scared. The government has helpfully prepared t-shirts which English football fans who are not football hooligans can wear to identify themselves. They say “Not a football hooligan.” Problem solved. A friend of mine is planning to buy a bunch, figuring they’ll become collector’s items.

In Jordan, for the first time a woman divorces a man.

The NY Times points out that when Bush was condemning Castro’s human rights record yesterday, he was standing next to the prime minister of Malaysia at the time.

One of the sillier conflicts is between Britain and Spain over control of Gibraltar. Talks are breaking down even as we speak, in part because Britain has promised not to change the Rock’s status without a referendum of the locals, who regard absorption into Spain much as Ian Paisley does the Irish Republic. Spain doesn’t want to admit to the principle of consulting people, because someone might suggest that the Basques be asked their opinion (Spain is about to ban the Basque independence party Batasuna).

Speaking of referenda, do you notice that no one but no one is demanding the referendum that was supposed to be held for the last 50 years in Kashmir? One reason I have trouble choosing up sides there is that I really have no idea what the majority of the Kashmiri people actually want.

The Democrats are shocked, shocked, to find that there is fund-raising going on (that’s a Casablanca allusion, in case you missed it). Bush is using in his fund-raising a photo of himself on Air Force One on the phone to Dick Cheney on September 11, asking “Can I come home yet?” This is said to be capitalizing on a national tragedy, although Bill Maher says that another picture, of Bush after the last election, is doing the same. I never watch his show, but I’m kind of sorry he’s been cancelled.

Every cloud of uncertainty has a coal-black lining

The Bush admin has asked a federal judge to reverse his decision suspending permits to mine for coal by ripping the tops off of mountains and tossing them in rivers. It says the decision “casts a tremendous cloud of uncertainty”. Better that than muddying the waters...

Since 1967 Israel has stolen 42% of the West Bank (actually, the report doesn’t say, but I’m assuming this doesn’t include the 25% or more of the West Bank that’s been annexed to “Jerusalem”). The settlements themselves don’t take up that much territory, but their municipal boundaries are to say the least generous. Add to that land allotted to the settlers’ regional councils, seized for military purposes, declared abandoned, declared “state land” under old Ottoman laws.....

On further reading of the details of Bush’s nuclear missile treaty, if “details” is not too grandiose a word for a 3-page document (compared to Start I’s 700 pages), I find it to be totally pointless. It requires literally nothing for the next ten years, and then when it’s about to require something, it expires. That Putin agreed to this amounts to a complete surrender. Will encourage Russia to store nukes, which leaves them open to theft, and does nothing about tactical nukes. It has no monitoring provisions.

Crown Prince whatsisface has been explaining that he spent a full five hours with Bush because Bush was such a complete ignoramus that he needed everything explained to him very slowly. The Guardian used a headline evoking comedian Harry Enfield’s upper-class twit character, Tim Nice But Dim.

5.2, big deal

Yes there was an earthquake, yes I felt it, end of story.

Article in Tuesday Washington Post on the Carlyle Group and the Crusader, detailing how they made out like bandits off a failed military project, and just who they paid off, how much.

Daily Variety’s site lists under theater reviews: Sweeney Todd, A Class Act. Turns out that’s two different plays.

A tv show actually under consideration involves a makeover of a “crude and uncultured” straight guy into a “hip and happening Renaissance man a the hands of five fabulously trendy gay men.” It sounds, um, fabulous.

A nuclear arms agreement is reached between the US and Russia, and the cold war is finally over. Except that we’re not actually destroying any weapons, unless we feel like it of course, just putting them in storage. No one’s said who long it would take to get them ready to launch again, but I’m guessing not very long. So this agreement actually restricts us in no way whatsoever, but is entirely voluntary in its effects, just like Bush’s idea of how to regulate polluters.

The real nuclear war is more likely to show up over Kashmir. As I understand it, the US is pissed at Pakistan for not doing anything about all those Al Qa’eda militants hanging out there, which Pakistan says is because it has to defend its border against India, which is only pissed because Pakistan isn’t doing anything about all those Kashmiri militants sneaking into India. India is threatening to close the mountain passes and launch rocket attacks on training camps that Musharraf had promised to close and didn’t.

The British have finished up their sweep in Afghanistan, hilariously named Operation Snipe, and pronounced it a complete success, despite not having caught a single enemy.

As if France having the sole choice between Chirac and Le Pen wasn’t bad enough, now Israel has Sharon v. Netanyahu. Next up, Darth Vader or Ming the Merciless? Ebola or bubonic plague? Adam Sandler or Jim Carrey?

Speaking of crappy elections, people with no arms are being trained how to vote in the forthcoming Sierra Leonean elections, where they can mark their ballots with their big toe. Why do they have no arms? They were hacked off in reprisal for voting in the last elections.

A forthcoming book called The Science of Superheroes informs us that Spider-Man is not scientifically accurate. And Krypton’s gravity would have to be 8X that of earth for Superman to be able to leap a 30-story building. On this subject, I would recommend Larry Niven’s essay on the mechanics of sex between Superman and an all-too human Lois Lane, “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex.”

Trying to ruin Carter’s trip to Cuba, the Bushies last week claimed Cuba was developing bio weapons. Their proof is that it has “dual-use” facilities--this is all Condi Rice could drag out on McNeil-Lehrer, and all Carter himself was shown in his briefings--which means nothing more than that it produces its own medicine.

Congress is working on a measure to deny arms sales to any country that signs up to the War Crimes Tribunal, and to permit operations to rescue any Americans caught in its evil clutches. One Democrat, I’m sorry I forget whom, had a little fun questioning his colleagues to find out that they didn’t know where the court would be, i.e., that they were forget whom, had a little fun questioning his colleagues to find out that they didn’t know where the court would be, i.e., that they were authorizing war against the Netherlands.

Saddam Hussein offers Arafat a safe haven if he gets expelled from Israel. Right, cause in Baghdad he could get away from having rockets dropping all around him.

Ben-Gurion: “whoever approaches the Zionist problem from a moral aspect is not a Zionist.”

The first sentence of a wire story: “A Japanese faith healer was sentenced to death for beating 6 people to death with a drumstick during a 1995 exorcism ritual.” So is that a stick used to beat a drum or a chicken part? Enquiring minds want to know.

This week may have seen the last use of Old Sparky.

In 1999 the Pakistani army “mobilized” its nuclear weapons (whatever exactly that means) against India, and the prime minister wasn’t told, although he was informed by Clinton. Before Sharif, Benazir Bhutto had to ask for US intelligence briefings about her country’s nuclear capability, because the army wouldn’t tell her. And we’re continuing to support military rule for what reason now? Well, one reason is that it’s so much better on women’s issues than some other Muslim countries, although when informed about a woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery because she reported being raped, he seemed a little surprised and said that he’d never given much deep thought to changing the country’s ridiculous adultery laws.

Saddam Hussein offers Arafat a safe haven if he gets expelled from Israel. Right, cause in Baghdad he could get away from having rockets dropping all around him.

Ben-Gurion: “whoever approaches the Zionist problem from a moral aspect is not a Zionist.”

The first sentence of a wire story: “A Japanese faith healer was sentenced to death for beating 6 people to death with a drumstick during a 1995 exorcism ritual.” So is that a stick used to beat a drum or a chicken part? Enquiring minds want to know.

This week may have seen the last use of Old Sparky.

In 1999 the Pakistani army “mobilized” its nuclear weapons (whatever exactly that means) against India, and the prime minister wasn’t told, although he was informed by Clinton. Before Sharif, Benazir Bhutto had to ask for US intelligence briefings about her country’s nuclear capability, because the army wouldn’t tell her. And we’re continuing to support military rule for what reason now? Well, one reason is that it’s so much better on women’s issues than some other Muslim countries, although when informed about a woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery because she reported being raped, he seemed a little surprised and said that he’d never given much deep thought to changing the country’s ridiculous adultery laws.

Enough with the Amish already. Put the fucking orange triangle on the fucking carts already. Call it the new black. If you want to stay away from modernity so much, keep the carts off the asphalt, which you won’t find in the bible either. Do you believe they’re actually talking about leaving Pennsylvania for Ohio to escape the oppressors?

A couple of days ago, the CIA tried to assassinate an Afghan warlord (that’s what the news stories called him--you might never have known he used to be prime minister). He had no connections with the Taliban or with Al Qa’eda. To show how little critical attention is paid to American foreign policy, you’ll note that there has been no mention of this in today’s newspapers, or any hint as to the justification, or who ordered this.

The Bush administration is planning to interpret the laws against discrimination to allow public schools to set up separate, but no doubt equal, schools for each sex. Add to this the growth in compulsory school uniforms, and abstinence-only sex ed., well, all you have to do is add nuns with rulers...

Speaking of the dark ages, Bahrain just had its first election in which women could vote. Bahrain never made it on to the list of countries in which women couldn’t vote--like Kuwait--because no one else has voted since 1973. Women ran for office, too, but none were elected or made it run-offs.

Maryland suspends the death penalty while it investigates why most people on its death row are black and why all their victims, but one, were white.

The House Appropriations Committee adds another unasked for $200 million on for aid to Israel. No wonder Sharon looks like the cat who’s swallowed a 350-pound canary.

Actually, the happiest-looking person I’ve seen on tv lately has been that kid who put all the bombs in the mailboxes. A smiley face? A SMILEY FACE?

The Bush administration does not, contrary to what I said in my last, support the right to own machine-guns. Sorry: badly written wire service report.

Bush calls the latest suicide bombing (or perhaps the one before that) a “wanton taking of innocent life”. Presumably, the wanton taking of guilty life, say in 152 executions, is just tickety boo. No one ever applies the term wanton to sex any more, I kind of miss it.

Sharon has been saying that he got permission from the US to bypass Arafat. The White House denies it, but you gotta wonder. Sharon has been talking about reforming the Palestinian administration, as have some unnamed Bushies, and the minute they all move to Palestine and take out citizenship I’m sure their opinions will be taken with all the seriousness they deserve. Clearly the plan is to “reform” Arafat into a figure-head role like the president of Israel. Or the Queen of England, but without the dress sense.

The comedian Reno is quoted as describing Dubya’s ad lib speaking as like a drunk trying to look sober. Today you could see him desperately trying to remember what you call the place where the Palestinians live, finally settling on “the Palestinian world.”

I assumed that Israel had forged the documents it claims link Arafat to terrorism. Instead, it seems that they just lied about the content of those document. Speaking as an academic, there’s nothing as annoying as shoddy scholarship.

Sharon pissed off the Bush admin by hinting to the ADL while in the US that the Bushies had helped him in preventing the Jenin inquiry.

We got trouble: and while Sharon is in the US a suicide bomber blows up a snooker hall. Which I wouldn’t have mentioned, but I wanted to make the We got trouble joke.

Hilariously, the Israelis and Palestinians were proposing to exile people from the Church of the Nativity to Italy without asking Italy first. Italy says no, meaning it wants a present. Like being the location of the proposed Middle East conference.

Sharon is now making demands about restructuring the Palestinian authority. I thought the Israeli army already did that. And where Powell proposes a conference in which neither Sharon nor Arafat go so they don’t have to meet, Sharon proposes that he go and Arafat not.

I’d been wondering why the US was planning to un-sign the treaty setting up the war crimes court, which seemed like an unnecessary symbolic gesture. But actually, under the Vienna Convention of 1969, if a country has signed a treaty, even if it hasn’t ratified it, it’s not supposed to actively undermine that treaty. So now we can.

The London Times claimed yesterday that Pim Fortuyn’s assassination robbed European politics of its innocence (that was an op-ed headline). Yes, innocence, that was exactly the word I was looking for to describe European politics. A Dutch paper applied the same phrase to the Netherlands, which at least makes more sense. Although if your assassinated politician is a racist, you might wish to rethink the whole innocence angle there too. He was killed by an animal rights activist, which makes it that little bit sillier.

If the NY Times seemed completely unsure what position Fortuyn actually held in the Rotterdam government, it also failed to explain how Chirac was able to just pick a new prime minister in what is supposed to be a parliamentary system (I don’t know the answer to this one myself). He will serve only 6 weeks, but plans to pretend to crack down on crime in a big way to secure the Le Pen voters, acting by decree rather than legislation. Explain to me again how this was a victory for democracy?

The Bushies have now *officially* taken the position that the 2nd Amendment protects the right of individuals, not in a militia, to own guns, evidently including machine guns.

If you’ve been paying attention to the Bush admin’s Middle East rhetoric the last few days, you’ll have noticed that they have found something new with which to beat up Yasir Arafat: corruption, a word that now makes its way into every speech. I’m not sure what the point of this is.

I read a story told by one of those Israeli reservists who refused to serve in the Re-Occupied Territories (of whom there have been almost none in the last month and a half, if you were wondering). When he was previously serving on roadblock duty, the army asked if the platoon needed anything. Washing water, they said, so a digger fractured a pipe, giving 10 Israelis the ability to wash on duty, while a village of 5,000 had no water for 5 days.

The World Cup is being held in Seoul this year and there is a major push on to promote the eating of dog, with lots of free samples for the tourists, including some sort of liquid dog that is expected to make them forget about Pepsi forever.

Hurrah, hurrah, Jacques Chirac is reelected. Bush has not used the word corruption about him, but surely a “victory for democracy” would have meant that this corrupt embezzler would have been hounded out of public life and into a jail cell.

For a good time, call...

212-479-7990. (This is a number intended to be given to people in bars in NY). Oh, just call it.

The Israelis let Yasir Arafat out. He immediately saw his shadow, meaning six more millennia of intractable turbulence. [Daily Show joke]

God created war to teach Americans geography. [European joke]

The golf ball martyr is out of prison pending an appeal.

However South Carolina just executed someone who probably didn’t do it. He’s supposed to have killed a state trooper, and was convicted on the evidence of his hitch-hiker, who is a loon and has since confessed. The state Sup Court had a judge check it out and he said that she told so many stories, her confession can’t be believed. As opposed to her original testimony.

Dick Armey says that it’s ok if Israel grabs the entire West Bank and expels all the Palestinians. And the Senate and House both pass resolutions taking Israel’s side, the House saying that Arafat is not “a viable partner for peace.” Unless you use Bush’s dictionary, in which Sharon is a man of peace.

Just a few days after Linda Lovelace dies, we find out that Woodward and Bernstein’s Deep Throat was one Mark Felt. So now we know. Maybe.

A new site www.medialens.org, is worth checking out, for articles on subjects and perspectives ill-treated by the media. Check out, for example, the Noam Chomsky piece on the Middle East.

Follow-ups: the US was force-feeding prisoners in Guantanamo last week, but isn’t now, although it will go back to it since they still aren’t eating. Prisoners are being tortured in our name, but no one cares. It’s nice to know that American justice is better than that of Saudi Arabia, where they just extracted two teeth from a man who knocked out two teeth from another man in a fight (they also fined, flogged and imprisoned him).

And the guy with the missing leg in Texas was finally executed yesterday, and they still wouldn’t give him an artificial leg. So he was wheeled in. A proud day.

It’s always fun when Republicans’ worst instincts conflict with their other worst instincts. In this case, a bankruptcy bill written by the credit card companies to screw consumers is being held up because it may harm the ability of anti-abortion protestors to declare bankruptcy in order to avoid paying fines and damages.

5 years of Tony Blair, as of today, and 50 years of QE2. To show that British politics are no less dysfunctional than Lizzie’s family, there were endless difficulties in working up a seating chart that accommodated the 4 living former prime ministers (primes minister?), who all hate each other.

A Sunday Times poll suggested that if Britain had a party like the French Front Nationale, anti-immigrant and anti-Europe, 22% would vote for it. The suggestion is that if fascist parties weren’t unrespectable, there would be a major constituency for them. I picture it like a junior high dance, with all the guys hanging out at one end of the gym, waiting for one or two of them to cross over and make it ok. And this is everywhere. The support for the old parties and support for representative democracy, is growing thinner and thinner. Where it was never that strong, Zimbabwe and Pakistan, say, we’ve seen unsubtle parodies of the democratic process (the US says of Pakistan’s referendum today, in which anyone could vote anywhere as many times as they wished and counting was done centrally with no oversight, that it was Pakistan’s internal affair.) Hugo Chavez led a failed coup and then was actually elected, which means no one could expect that he’d necessarily leave when his term was up. But in the last decade, we’ve seen support for old ruling parties literally evaporate in Italy, Canada. Italy’s ruling party is named after a football team. 1/3 of electors in France’s presidential election voted for fascist or trotskyite candidates. A wrestler is governor of Minnesota, and the cuteness of that has rather worn off. I’m telling you, if a fascist party could get itself that first 20% of the vote in most countries of the world including this one, the next 20% would just roll in. The continuing debate on how to handle Le Pen in today’s Guardian (guardian.co.uk/worldlatest) is instructive: do you debate him, do you go out in the streets yelling No passaran, do you ignore him? There is no consensus on how to make it clear that fascism is unacceptable to an electorate that doesn’t understand that already.