A diamond is (creepy) forever

Rummy Rumsfeld said that Russia’s trade deal with Iraq branded it an ally of terrorist states. Also today, the US said that Musharaf is still an ally, despite his 29 constitutional amendments yesterday. Also, Henry Kissinger was on McNeil-Lehrer today, talking about Iraq, where he has a rather sordid history of his own, which he wasn’t asked about--nor was he asked about the State Dept documents released this week showing that the Argentinian junta was considered an ally and that the US gov didn’t care about human rights abuses in the 1970s (the NY Times today said that Kissinger couldn’t be reached for comment, but there he was on tv as I was reading the paper, not being asked for comment).

The Australian tax authorities went after a convicted drug dealer for income tax on his dealings. So he insisted he had a right to deduct A£80,000 stolen from him during a failed deal. The courts agreed.

China has ended a plan for personalized number plates because the choices were too Western: FBI, 007, etc.

Bush proposed a new policy to prevent forest fires: remove all the trees. Problem solved.

Just goober

I guess Bob Barr wasn’t “just gooder” after all.

Evidently Bush likes to make his staff go jogging in Crawford when it’s 100°. If he didn't do it himself, you'd think
it was a fraternity pledge thing. Bush says running helps him clear his mind. Of what?

Rumsfeld says Al Qaida operating inside Iraq, although refuses to offer any proof. “I just know,” he said. Magic 8-Ball, I’m guessing. Iraq confirms presence of Al Qaida, in the part of the country controlled by Rumsfeld’s allies. Admittedly they also claim that Abu Nidal killed himself by shooting himself twenty or thirty times. Well, he was a fanatic you know, they do things like that.

6 weeks before Pakistani elections, Gen./President/Dictator Musharaf declares there will be “a transition from a democratic dictatorship to an elected essence of democracy." Something like that new-car smell that comes out of an aerosol spray can, no doubt. Oh, and he also gives himself the power to dissolve the elected Parliament, and a military-dominated National Security Council the right to overrule it. Oh, and he gave himself another 5 years in office to oversee the transition to democracy.

Speaking of the essence of democracy, Thomas Friedman in the Wed. NY Times comments that the Bushies advocate democracy only in regimes that oppose America, that policy is “to punish its enemies with the threat of democracy and reward its friends with silence on democratization.” This is an old Republican policy, as Friedman does not acknowledge, dating back to the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, which applied only to slaves in the South, where Lincoln’s writ did not run, and not to those held throughout the Civil War in the North.

The US adds another nation to the list of nations whose leader we’re trying to overthrow: Zimbabwe. Yes, Mugabe is a bastard, but before we start renaming his country after Cecil Rhodes (don’t tell our gov that imperial powers used to be able to just do that, or Kabul will be called Rummy), we might ask how big this sort of thing will go over in Africa.

For a start, they might start asking why the scientist who almost certainly was responsible for the anthrax outbreak was employed by the Pentagon when he used to do bio warfare with the Rhodesian and South African regimes, and was involved in a little anthrax outbreak in Zimbabwe, and whether that might have anything to do with why he hasn’t been arrested yet.

Something I hadn’t heard before: Arizona makes sex offenders on probation take polygraphs.

Where they're coming from

Quote in Washington Post from a University of NC student:

"I never really knew what the Koran was or what it said before this," said Chip Cook, 18. "Now I feel like I have a better understanding of where my Muslim friends are coming from."

Oh, come on. In the history of the universe no one named Chip ever had a Muslim friend. Indeed, if you wanted to keep a UNC student named Chip (or indeed George W. Bush) out of your hair for a while, you’d ask him to find Muslimia on a map.

Chip Cook, indeed. This is why you should never name babies while smoking pot, as Chip’s brother Cheetos and sister Pringles can attest.

Newsweek story on war crimes in Afghanistan by our illustrious allies, including the suffocation to death of 1,000 POWs. This was to be expected, it’s not like they hadn’t done it before (as I said here on 11/11/01, and the article makes clear). No proof that American forces participated or knew about it, yet, but they were certainly in the area. The Pentagon has been covering this up for 6 months.

New Yorker cartoon: 3 scientists in lab coats. One says, “We’ve just made a big cancer research breakthrough. Have a cigar.”

The US military just completed its largest-ever military exercises, costing $250m. It was rigged to make sure the American side won--so rigged that the retired Marine Lt-Gen who commanded the opposition forces resigned halfway through. The games were supposed to test current Pentagon war-fighting strategies.

The Israel-Palestine security deal has begun; it didn’t explicitly ban Israel assassinating people, so two days in, guess what...

Shoot first, ask questions later: Donald Rumsfeld says we shouldn’t wait for any evidence that Saddam Hussein is up to anything before going to war. "The people who argued have to ask themselves how they are going to feel at that point where another event occurs and it's not a conventional event but an unconventional event, and ask themselves the question, 'Was it right to have wanted additional evidence or additional time, or another U.N. resolution?'" And then he goes on to compare him to Hitler. Of course if we think of the Iran-Iraq war as Germany and Czechoslovakia, that would make Rumsfeld Neville Chamberlain.

A carpet is his soul

Here’s a sentence you don’t see every day, from the Daily Telegraph: “Scientists from Cambridge University who played loud dance music to drugged mice have received an official reprimand from the Home Office.”

The Pope in Poland warns against playing God. Usually, of course, Catholic priests like to play The Strict Headmaster and the Naughty Boy Who Needs to Be Punished.

The 4th Circuit has refused to ban the University of North Carolina holding voluntary classes to discuss the Koran. Had this been successful, UNC students would have tried similar court cases to ban the assignment of all other books, on the grounds that reading just eats into their heavy drinking schedule.

George Bush, enthusiastic: “I came off my ranch today in Crawford. There are not many places that would kind of lure me away, but Iowa State Fair is one. God has blessed Iowa and the citizens of this great state.” Really doesn’t get out much, does he?

Let the voters decide

Nigeria has to delay its next elections because termites ate the electoral register. Well, it’s original anyway.

Bush has finally responded to criticism of his Iraq obsession by saying that he’ll listen and calling it a “healthy debate” (unless it’s by a foreigner like the German chancellor, in which case they’ll send the ambassador to chew him out, in what some people might consider an attempt to influence the forthcoming German elections) (I mean, entire countries, many of them, have expressed opposition, but it wasn’t until Brent Scowcroft did so that Bush felt he had to respond publicly, which is an interesting set of priorities), and said “But America needs to know, I’ll be making up my mind based upon the latest intelligence and how best to protect our own country plus our friends and allies.” Try to diagram that sentence. So the real underlying message is that Bush might listen, but Bush, alone, will decide (to do exactly what he was going to do all along). Frank Rich, in a good column in the Saturday NY Times that y’all should read--
about Bush’s tendency to put on shows like the Waco summit (which someone on Washington Week said was an insult to dogs and ponies) to give the illusion of activity, says that Richard Perle gave the game away when he said that after all Bush’s bluster (not Perle’s term) on Iraq, their would be a collapse of confidence if he didn’t go ahead. Wasn’t that what Johnson and Nixon kept saying about Vietnam?

And the Sunday New York Times says that the US was providing Iraq battle-field satellite intelligence during the Reagan administration, when they knew it was using chemical weapons. The article makes clear that no one expressed any concern about this whatsoever.

A judge in a poor Ohio county tells prosecutors they can’t go after a death penalty because the cost to the county of paying for everything, including defense lawyers, would be too high.

Gee, and I thought there was no price too high to get in the way of our executing people, like the Mexican citizen just fried in Texas despite having been denied consular access (indeed, the US kept lying to Mexico that he wasn’t a citizen), seriously damaging President Vicente Fox, whose only selling point was that he was supposed to be close to the American government. But hey, if we wouldn’t not execute someone for the pope...

Katherine Harris has a sense of humor after all. Her Republican challenger is suing to have her thrown off the ballot, after she failed to resign as Florida’s secretary of state as required. Her response: “I say, let the voters decide." Now that’s funny!

When it’s bad

Israel finally got one of its human shields (I believe they call it the “neighbor policy”) killed.

Stephen Bochco’s next series will be another series involving NY cops--set in the year 2069. The mind boggles.

www.Vicefund.com. I think this one is serious, a mutual fund that invests in alcohol, tobacco, gambling and firearms. Motto: “When it’s good, it’s very, very good...and when it’s bad, it’s better.”

The California Supreme Court rules that an illegally obtained confession doesn’t invalidate a later one. I.e., the cops can break Miranda and then use the illegal confession as pressure to extract one they can use in court. 5 justices (of 7 voting) saw no problem with that.

You gotta love Jeb Bush. After finally firing the head of child welfare services for, ya know, losing a bunch of kids, he picks a replacement whose name is associated with a Christian loon group report saying, among other things, that married women shouldn’t work, that beating your child to the point of raising welts is the Christian way, and evidently that masturbation should be illegal. Still, as long as they aren’t using them for human shields.

Given the scenario that a US attack on Iraq would result in Iraq launching missiles at Israel and Israel responding, possibly with nukes, who do you think is most strongly behind the US attacking Iraq? Ariel Sharon.

Shocked, shocked I say

Noticed gray chest hairs, two of them, for the first time today. So old, so very old, so tired, take nap now.

In 1998, the Pentagon decided to privatize its travel expenses. Personnel would be ordered to take a personal, repeat personal, interest-free credit card with Bank of America--that is, involuntarily forced into a private contract with a corporation-- charge their expenses, and then hope the Pentagon would reimburse them before their credit tanked. Results are exactly what you’d expect. Story in the Village Voice.

sizehimup.co.uk allows you to estimate the size of a man’s penis using a formula based on the size of feet, nose, and hands.

A drug addict who broke into a doctor's surgery near Hanover in Germany was discovered fast asleep the following morning, Expatica.com reports. He had injected himself with a tranquillizer instead of the narcotic he was seeking. A doctor revived him and he was promptly arrested.

The inventor of the modern frisbee has died. In Santa Cruz. He wants his ashes inserted into a number of frisbees, some going to family and friends, others to be sold to benefit a planned frisbee museum.

The Guardian headline says that scientists are “shocked” that weeds have bred with genetically-modified crops, creating, wait for it, super-weeds.

New Yorker cartoon: man and woman in restaurant. He to her: ‘I never said “I love you,” I said “Love ya.” Big difference.’

Bizarrely, the US has accused the EU of “inappropriate” behaviour in trying to get other countries not to do private deals with the US not to send its soldiers to the International Criminal Court. As opposed to the US threats to cut off military aid to any country that doesn’t comply.

The correctness of my views

Last Feb. 22, I dissected Bush’s comments on North Korea, “No wonder I think they’re evil,” saying that for Bush the belief came first and the evidence, if any, second. I said, “I think he’s actually a little contemptuous of people who have to have evidence and logic to support their beliefs; for real men, beliefs derive from their ‘character.’” Well, here’s Ian Kershaw, in his biography of Adolf Hitler, on Hitler’s reading while in prison after the Beerhall Putsch: “He read not for knowledge or enlightenment, but for confirmation of his own preconceptions. He found what he was looking for.” He told a friend, “I recognized the correctness of my views.”

In a statement of astonishing arrogance even for Rummy Rumsfeld, today he said of Iran, “it may well be that they, for whatever reason, have turned over some people to other countries, but they’ve not turned any to us.” Why on earth would Iran consider itself under any obligation to turn over anyone to the United States? Don’t notice any reporters asking him about yesterday’s plan to send assassination squads into foreign countries.

Today, uninterestingly enough, is lefthanders’ day. Did you know that almost no one in Japan admits to being left handed? Did you know that the longest word you can type using only the left hand is “stewardesses”? Now you know. And by tomorrow, you won’t know it again.

Bush’s economic forum (a word my dictionary defines as “a meeting or medium for an exchange of views,” which is impossible when the views of everyone invited were interchangeable) was described by one participant as the biggest thing ever to happen in Waco. Man, where’s the FBI when you really need them? Several CEOs referred to themselves as “regular folks.” Dick Cheney said “It is easy to sit in Washington and get a disoriented picture of what goes on as opposed to getting out here periodically and ... talk to folks who are day in and day out where the rubber meets the road.” I think he may already be a tad disoriented. Bush himself pushed his Texas accent into overdrive, in the mistaken belief that it was reassuring. The only thing I was reassured by was that this stage-managed piece of propaganda was so incompetent that you could see the possibility for Bush losing in 2004. Christopher Hitchens writes of Bush Iraqi policy: “A dirty secret is involved here. From the US point of view, the present regime in Iraq is nearly ideal. It consists of a strong Sunni Muslim but approximately secular military regime. All it needs is a new head.”

Political abnormality illness. Do you think Blue Cross covers that?

Evidently homicide rates are down not because homicidal violence is down, but because emergency medicine has gotten better.

Tom Tomorrow points out that conservatives now refer to the invasion of Afghanistan as the War for the Liberation of Afghanistan. Presumably because the whole capturing-bin-Laden thing failed so miserably.

The Chinese now keep as many of their political prisoners in psychiatric asylums as the Soviets used to. “Political abnormality illness.”

Speaking of political abnormality illness, some younger members of the British Tory party are considering splitting off to form their own libertarian party. Tentative name: the Start Again Party. What a bunch of saps! Doesn’t really bode well for their future, does it?

Rumsfeld wants military special forces (assassination squads, as the Guardian puts it) to perform covert operations in countries with which the US is not at war, without telling the locals. Didn’t that sort of thing used to be considered an act of war?

Would American foreign policy have been more competent in the past year if anyone in government actually knew Arabic? Well, there’s one group trying to break down the barriers between Americans and Arabs by translating key newspaper pieces and documents. Unfortunately, it seems to be a front for Israeli intelligence, and its translations are a bit lop-sided, as are its selections. But through the use of email, it’s become influential in influencing the media as well as politicians.

Guardian on how Mugabe’s seizure of white farms is nothing like as harmful as the land policies foisted on Africa by the IMF. Yeah, yeah, land reform, I can see your eyes glazing over. Read it anyway, it’s an important article.

This does not conform to the task of civilisation

A major sponsor of the evil bankruptcy bill, Rep James Moran (D-VA), had credit card debt trouble himself. Until, of course, he sponsored a certain evil bankruptcy bill. He is the recipient of loans not only from one of those companies, but also a pharmaceutical company whose patent he tried to get extended, and from AOL (You’ve got corruption). For the more ordinary, overly optimistic type, there’s always something like this.

So in contrast to Mr. Moran, I present a story of politicians who do live by their own rules, the Milton Friedman-loving British Tory party, which is selling tickets to a gala dinner at this year’s party conference for less than half what the more successful Labour Party are able to charge in the open market.

Next month Ariel Sharon will go to Florida to stump for Jeb Bush.

Website of the day: http://polygamypoetry.tripod.com/songs.html

Yes, that’s songs celebrating the magic that is polygamy. And as if "The Poly Man Can" isn’t icky enough, there’s some accidental humor from the ads provided by the host site.

Speaking of which, two Japanese teenagers in a student exchange program were placed in a polygamist home in Salt Lake City.

Christian pickup lines, each one creepier than the last. Be sure to shower afterwards. So unclean, so very unclean.

If you were unaware that John Lennon was actually shot by Stephen King on the orders of Richard Nixon, you didn’t spend any time in Sproul Plaza in the early 1990s, when Steve Lightfoot was plying his trade there (and you didn’t read every third word of Newsweek, which is roughly how Lightfoot was able to detect the conspiracy). Steve didn’t get the help he so desperately needed, but he did get online. Did you know that if you fold the $20 bill lengthwise, you can see the Twin Towers on fire? After all 9+11=20.

Thanks to an especially brilliant change in the tax laws making non-physical-injury awards taxable, a Chicago policewoman who won her case for sex discrimination will owe the IRS $100,000 more than she was awarded by the jury.

Silly season British stories:

The Queen will be asked if she wants to meet two teenagers to explain how she felt after they hurled eggs at her car during her Golden Jubilee visit to Nottingham. The request is part of a new scheme in England and Wales under which victims of youth crime are offered the chance to come face to face with their tormentors.

3-year old nursery schoolers will be asked to rate their teachers by government inspectors, using a system of smiling, frowning, or unemotional (i.e., British) faces.

Also, a dolphin caught some jewel thieves off Dorset, and UFOs are destroying crops in Greece.

Gurbansoltan-edzhe is the cruelest month

I grow old... I grow old... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Here’s some advice (from “The Producers”): “When you’re down and out, and everybody thinks you’re finished, that’s the time to stand up on your two feet and shout ‘Who do you have to fuck to get a break in this town?’”

According to Saddam, "Darkness shall be defeated," he vowed in a 20-minute address. "The forces of evil will carry their coffins on their backs to die in disgraceful failure." Well, that’s be convenient, because they’ll already be carrying their coffins on their... no, no, I guess it really doesn’t make much sense.

Tonight is the deadline for Zimbabwean white farmers to leave their farms, which will then be turned over to Moammar Qaddafi, who’s been loaning them a lot of oil lately. It was supposed to go to poor black people, but shit happens.

If you’re wondering what sort of government we imposed on Nicaragua, well, the former president Arnoldo Alemán is being charged with theft of $100 million. The system works.

Niyazov was named president for life of Turkmenistan. He celebrated by renaming all the months. April is named after his mother (Gurbansoltan-edzhe), isn’t that sweet? And January for himself. He’s also renaming the days. The Times says “Mr Niyazov is not a man renowned for his modesty”.

Sharon calls the Palestinian leadership a “terror posse,” which I thought was very “street” of him.

Just Gooder

I wish to point out a new genre of telephone advertising, the sincere answering machine message. This is the message that you’re reasonably sure was recorded (today’s is from a satellite tv installer) but is intended to sound spontaneous and un-salesmanlike. The keynote of the form is the Columbo-like, “Oh, I almost forgot to tell you...” towards the end.

New Israeli tactic: stripping Palestinians it doesn’t like of citizenship.

I’m enjoying the vicious Republican primary race in Georgia. Bob Barr (who I can never mention without pointing out his possession of the world’s creepiest mustache) actually managed to condescend to Georgians, something hitherto believed impossible. His commercial (available on Babar, I mean Bob Barr’s website, but it’s a long download for not much) features a hayseed farmer saying “Linder’s good, Barr’s just gooder.”

From the This Life from the 7/21 London Sunday Times, which I had to type myself, because Rupert Murdoch got greedy:

A man in India beats the world record for having the most cement blocks smashed on his groin at once.

A CD by an Amazon parrot who impersonates Ethel Merman. Did the whole session in two takes.

Priests in Milan discovered that a couple who regularly prayed in front of a statue of the Madonna were actually recharging their mobile phone from the socket behind the statue.

Happy Hiroshima Day!

Kofi Annan rejects Iraq’s offer to talk about arms inspections, saying he was waiting for a formal invitation. So the answer to “What are you waiting for, an engraved invitation,” would in fact be yes. Fine, it’s most likely a ploy, but so what? Inspections either happen or they don’t, and it’s not like seeing which would interfere with anyone’s precious bombing schedule, since we’re not invading a desert country in August.

Although I am suddenly reminded of some invasion, I can’t remember which, that I figured out was about to start precisely because the president, Bush or Clinton, went on vacation. La la, nothing to see here. But Bush actually vacations more than he invades, which is saying something.

Furthermore, on this balmy Hiroshima Day, comes a report that the US can’t possibly take out all of Iraq’s missiles in the first days, so if Iraq goes after Israel, the war will go nuclear, because restraint, you may have noticed, is not big on the Israeli agenda lately.

Speaking of Israeli restraint, Sharon wants to try peace activists for treason, for telling military personnel that they could be prosecuted for war crimes. And the High Court rules that it’s ok to demolish homes without any right of judicial appeal. Which is a war crime.

Kevin points out that the Indonesia-ExxonMobil story has run in the Wall Street Journal. But not on McNeil-Lehrer, the NY Times, or the Washington Post. And I’ll bet this is nothing that will ever be a Nightline or the subject of angry speeches on the floor of Congress. Just another non-story about American complicity with repression of dark-skinned foreigners in an oil-producing country. Colin Powell will never be asked a penetrating question about this, or any question.

Thanks to stepped-up border patrols, the number of Mexicans dying in the deserts of California and Arizona trying to cross the border have reached record numbers. That’ll teach ‘em.

The "spirit of America": trapped in a coal mine with the water rising. That's about right

Congress rejected Iraq’s offer to let them and any experts they wanted investigate any site they wanted in Iraq. Evidently that wasn’t acceptable because it wouldn’t be humiliating enough. Sure, Iraq is being threatened with war, but given that Iraq is already being bombed twice a week (including yesterday), they could be forgiven for thinking that the last war never actually ended. A Guardian piece on this is appended below.

The Guardian also has a story about Palestinian children who hire themselves out as human shields. Specifically, they get paid to get into cars with strangers (where are these kids’ parents?), who drive to Israeli checkpoints, to prove that these cars are not suicide bombs. Israelis shoot at cars with only one occupant--something that would really speed up the Bay Bridge, if you ask me.

WaPo on how the Republican control of the House since 1994 shifted federal funding from D to R districts.

The Financial Times ran a piece, that no one else has picked up, that the State Dept is trying to kill a lawsuit on behalf of Indonesian villagers against Exxon Mobil, which paid the Indonesian security forces to run a campaign of terror on its behalf. State says it would hurt national security in the war on terrorism. You know, the bad kind of terrorism, not the good kind.

NY Times columnist Paul Krugman notes that when he originally run a quote from Bush in which Bush said that he had earlier said that the promise not to run deficits would only be broken if there was war, recession, or national emergency and “Lucky me, I hit the trifecta,” Krugman was accused of making the quote up. The trifecta quote was real, but the thing about war, recession or nat. emergency, no one can find Bush ever having said that during the election campaign. His promise not to run deficits was never qualified. He lied.

Signing an abortion restriction bill, Bush said, "Today, through sonograms and other technology, we can see clearly that unborn children are members of the human family. They reflect our image, and they are created in God's own image." He also signed a bill banning children from tearing the heads off of Barbie and GI Joe dolls, which also reflect our image.

The pope excommunicates several women who were ordained priests. Evidently that’s a bigger sin than male priests who fuck choir boys. Or did I miss those guys being excommunicated?

Bush meets those coal miners and says that they represent the “spirit of America”, a phrase he used 11 times. The Washington Post notes that he spoke 13 minutes to them, and 30 at a fundraiser.

Not drowning, but waving

Someone at the NY Times wasn’t paying attention to its front page today. 2 of the 3 headlines above the fold are: “Wave of Attacks by Palestinians Kills at Least 14” and “Wave of Pupils Lacking English Strains Schools”. Maybe their headline writer went to the beach this weekend.

While the Bushies are complaining about Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons, Donald Rumsfeld used to be Reagan’s middle east envoy, and was literally in Iraq while it was using poison gas in its war with Iran. And helped broker the deals by which Iraq was sold the helicopters it later used to drop poison gas on the Kurds. Rumsfeld never publicly expressed any concern whatsoever about chemical weapons until the Gulf War.

By the way, did you know that Rumsfeld thought about running for president in 1988?

Israel is preparing for a smallpox attack by Iraq in event of war. They are stockpiling vaccine, but not actually vaccinating. Do you think Sharon is capable of withholding vaccine from the Palestinians? I’m not sure, although I tend to think he is, enough that I hope someone is going to put the pressure on him. During the last Gulf War, gas masks filtered down to the Palestinians very slowly, and...let’s see if I can remember this exactly...certain Orthodox males, unwilling to shave their beards, commandeered some of the masks intended for children.

As Israel bans any travel in the northern West Bank, a report comes out that 1/4 of Palestinian children are experiencing malnutrition. The Israeli “Health Minister” says they brought it on themselves.

A new bizarre law in France allows students as young as 13 to be jailed for dissing their teachers.

Seems I gave Bush too much credit. He did not in fact put down his golf club while deprecating Middle East violence.

Bolivia obeyed the US’s orders and elected our candidate (a millionaire, natch) president. Evidently this is not news.

Ah, France. Where else would vineyard owners sue the Transport Ministry for its campaign against drunken driving.

Bush comments on the latest attack in Israel: "I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killings." To show his sincerity, he put down his golf club before saying that.

Quickies: Turkey abolishes the death penalty. Taiwan’s president supports a referendum to declare Taiwan independent. The US resumes training Indonesian death squads, I mean the military. Gerhard Schroder says a vote for him is a vote against war in Iraq (unfortunately, he has no chance in hell).

A very attractive idea

A federal district judge rules that the gov must say how many people it has detained without trial since 9/11 and name them. Ashcroft continues to claim that he is only protecting their privacy rights. Which is especially amusing in the week of the executive perp walks.

Heard Dubya yesterday, talking about how evil Saddam Hussein was, and how he poisoned his own people. With arsenic in the drinking water, no doubt.

The rescued coal miners have sold their story to Disney: hi ho hi ho...

OK, I know I shouldn’t be laughing at this, but... a 12-year old in a wheelchair goes to Lourdes hoping for a cure. Instead, a bus belonging to the Catholic group (I won’t use the word “charity” from the newspaper story, if all it does for people is send them to Lourdes) Handicapped Children’s Pilgrimage Trust, ran him over. The mother is suing.

Joseph Biden’s daughter was arrested outside a bar. Man, that Biden family: even the daughter is plagiarizing from the Bush twins. (Or am I hoping for too long a memory with that joke?)

Percy wouldn't have made that mistake

So Katherine Harris, running for Congress against Percy the dog, again demonstrates her ignorance of Florida election law by not resigning as secretary of state when she started running. And she’s gonna win the election anyway.

The FBI, investigating leaks of its intelligence failures, tried to get the 37 Congresscritters and Senators on the two houses’ intelligence committees to take polygraphs. The Post says that most refused, citing separation of powers, but doesn’t say who gave in. I want names.

They are, however, less protective of their powers to consider treaties, voting unfettered fast-track trade negotiating powers to the president for five years. This is clearly unconstitutional, and not just because it is removing power from Congress and putting it into the hands of trade representatives, who are usually wholly owned subsidiaries of big business. No, the major problem is that the current Congress is voting away the power to amend any treaty which is inherent in the Congresses elected in 2002, 2004 and 2006, as if greater sovereignty inheres in this Congress than in those. No Congress may bind its successors, no temporary congressional majority may partially annul the results of the next 3 elections. This is a constitutional issue of the highest order. And yes, I am the only person in America who cares about this.

Iraq has offered to restart negotiations with the UN on inspection. The US says there is nothing to negotiate with except complete surrender. So now the US is also writing the UN’s press releases.

The US is evidently now pressuring other countries to promise not to turn US citizens over to the International Criminal Court. Romania is the first to give in.

If tyranny is to prevail, you must first kill all the lawyers

A federal judge rules that US courts have no jurisdiction over prisoners in Guantanamo. This is fascinating. That means that there are places in the world that are literally beyond any law, in which no courts and no legal code operate. Imagine, a society that has no lawyers: Guantanamo must be heaven itself.

Not only were no non-alarmists called to testify to the Senate on Iraq, but the Bush admin didn’t send anyone either. Evidently it’s “too early.” The one good thing about this Bush is that he doesn’t call Saddam Hussein “Sad-dammm” in that obnoxious sneering way his father had.

Speaking of one-sided, even though Israel barred UN representatives investigating the Jenin Massacre, a report was somehow still issued, derived entirely from secondary sources. In other words, they issued a report under the name of the UN with no better evidence than you or I could get from the internet. This is unconscionable given that the news reports have, predictably, mostly said that “The UN clears Israel of massacre.” (Actually I’m told it never uses the word massacre, but the UN web server is currently not working, like the UN itself). Moreover, it seems to give equal blame to the Palestinian militants, who shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Where they should have been--and not get slaughtered instantly, I mean--the report fails to say. It’s not quite a whitewash, but enough so that it rewards Israel’s refusal to cooperate.

I feel a little sheepish about quoting another UN report after trashing that one, but what the hell: human beings now use up 40% of all plant and marine growth.

Bush says “We must collectively get after those who kill in the name of some kind of false religion." Ari Fleischer says he didn’t mean all Muslims, just the ones who “distort” Islam, which Georgie considers “a religion of peace.” Given that Bush also considers Ariel Sharon a man of peace, you have to wonder how all those people keep getting killed. Well, as another George once wrote, War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is George W. Bush.

No more easy money? But I haven't had any yet, as Alice said to the Mad Hatter.

For the second time, a New York Times editor lets a reporter (I presume the same reporter) juxtapose a story about a Bush plan to screw the poor with how much money he was raising (I reported the last one Saturday). This time he wants to punish those on welfare still more, and raised $1 million, including from people who paid $10,000 to have their pictures taken with him. Bush is horrified at the notion that people on welfare might go to college instead of work--he calls it a loophole. “Now that’s not my view of helping people become independent. And it’s certainly not my view of understanding the importance of work and helping people achieve the dignity necessary so they can live a free life, free from government control.” But first, evidently, government has to squash their dreams, aspirations and chances of ever making more than $8 an hour, like a bug.

Yesterday a study came out that welfare reform is increasing the number of children living with neither parent.

Bush signed the corporate fraud bill that he refused to support earlier this month and seems already to be taking credit for. “No more easy money for corporate criminals, just hard time,” he said. What, they’ll be sentenced by the Supreme Court to serve as president or vice president? He also said that auditors will be audited, accountants will be held to account, and executives...

Guandong province, China, has increased the fines for having a second child to 8 times the couple’s annual income. Now, that’s welfare reform.

The State Department clears itself of any impropriety in its support for the failed coup in Venezuela.

The UN suppresses a report on the US air strike on that wedding, the very report that said that the US removed evidence from the scene. Amazingly, the report was submitted to the US and Afghan governments to release or not. UN investigations are beginning to have all the credibility of an Arthur Anderson account book. Also, Mary Robinson has finally openly accused the US of ordering her fired as head of the UN Human Rights Commission (which I said back in March).

So the Israeli government was going to send an exhibition about Albert Einstein to China. But China suggested they remove all references to Einstein being a Jew, so it’s going to Taiwan instead. The story on this mentioned an incident I hadn’t heard of before, but gave no date: pissed that an arms deal had fallen through, China served an Israeli delegation pork and shrimp. Anyone hear of this?

The US has declared victory in the Philippines and our troops are coming home. God knows what they’ve been doing, although they did rack up the highest death count of the year (helicopter crash). The group they went there to fight still possesses its leadership, the hostage rescue was badly fumbled, but by damn isn’t victory great!

The Congressional hearings on Iraq began today, and they were a poor meek thing indeed. Not a single opponent of war was asked to testify, and there seemed to be none in Congress. The thing is, since the Gulf War, containment has worked (not for the people of Iraq, of course, except for the Kurds, but nobody really cares about them, as the ongoing sanctions show). And you know there is no evidence whatsoever of Hussein having serious weapons capability left when they start talking about how easy it is to hide such programs--evidence, we don’ need no stinking evidence. In fact, the desire to bomb alleged underground labs and bunkers is behind the US’s plan to develop new “bunker-buster” nuclear weapons, and break the Test Ban Treaty in order to test them. I don’t want to see biological and nuclear weapons in the hands of the mustached-one either, but US hypocrisy on this begins to look like the laws they used to have in the South outlawing teaching slaves to read.

A draft national walking strategy

Remember the wedding in Afghanistan that the US bombed earlier this month? The Pentagon is kind of hoping you don’t, of course. They sent in “investigators” to find evidence. And remove it, to make sure no one else could see it, according to a preliminary UN report. I always wondered how you could bomb people and then send in more military to question witnesses (after securing the scene and tying up the women, of course) and expect much cooperation. One might also wonder why we haven’t seen any film from the cameras on the wings of the planes that were supposed to have been shot at.

You may remember the Beijing Evening News printed as true a piece from the Onion about Congress threatening to leave DC unless it built them a brand-new capitol with a retractable dome & luxury boxes, and then it refused to accept that it had made a mistake, challenging an LA Times reporter to prove that it was true. Eventually, they did retract, but they never quite got that the Onion is intended to be satirical. The paper said that some American newspapers make up news in order to make money. “According to congressional workers, the Onion is a publication that never ceases making up false reports.”

The British transport minister has become worried about a study saying that British people are walking less than they used to. “A draft national walking strategy is being prepared,” he said. The Sunday Times headline was “Minister of Sensible Walks.”

This week, the first Tory MP ever to announce his own homosexuality, without being, you know, caught at it, does so. Alan Duncan. And to tie this story in with Monty Python as well, it seems that Duncan’s constituency includes the grammar school that Graham Chapman went to. When he announced his own homosexuality:

the Python team received a letter from a woman outraged that he had confessed to being homosexual. She enclosed several prayers for his salvation and a quotation from the Bible. Eric Idle wrote back stating simply that the rest of the team had “taken him outside and killed him”. She did not write back.

Mr. Duncan has received the support of his party leader, Iain Duncan Smith, whose head looks remarkably like a penis. Other Tory MPs quoted were less supportive, including one called Crispin Blunt, whose name gives a decidedly mixed message.

A rather good “This Modern World” cartoon this week (find it at Salon)

Israel assassinates Ollie North

Bush proposes limiting pain & suffering compensation for malpractice to $250,000. By a mathematical coincidence, he was in North Carolina, where he plans to raise $750,000 for the state Republican party & Elizabeth Dole--that’s one amputation of the wrong leg, one blinding and one accidental death.

The censored Homer Simpson.

On this page there is a picture of the Hamas leader assassinated by Israel. Tell me this guy wasn’t Ollie North in a beard. Oh, and read the story, too. Also, it contains another picture which was on the front page of every European newspaper last week, but didn’t make it into any American source I saw.

Good piece in the NY Times magazine on the future of Afghanistan.

The Times also reports that Colin Powell is urging talks between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. Note that he is not urging anyone to speak to those most irrelevant of people, the Kashmiris.

Well, almost the most irrelevant, because that would be the Iraqi Kurds (all Kurds, really), which another story points out are currently enjoying a golden age, because the US is keeping the Iraqi government off their backs--at least until we install the next military dictatorship (one of our top choices is being investigated in Denmark for crime crimes, by the by) and turn it loose on them once again.

The pope visits Canada for World Youth Day. Actually, for the Catholic Church, every day is world youth day, if you know what I mean.

Headline in today’s NY Times: “Bishops Select Lay Board on Sexual Abuse Review.” Double entendre heaven, I hardly know where to begin, with the “lay board” or with “sexual abuse review,” which I see as a Siskel-Ebert sort of thing--the thin priest gives “Father Brian Sodomizes Little Jimmy the Choir Boy” a big thumbs up, but the fat priest thinks it was derivative and doesn’t compare to Father Brian’s early, funny sodomies. (OK, maybe not the place for a Woody Allen reference, or maybe the perfect place.)

Actually, the board has no members of victims groups and just one psychiatrist, who is a founder of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation and regularly testifies in court that victims are just making it up. Another member is Robert Bennett, last seen as Bill Clinton’s lawyer. I think I preferred his early, funny sex scandals.

Alaska’s Lt. Governor Fran Ulmer, according to a badly written AP sentence, “took a break from her campaign to become the state’s first female governor to shop for a smaller handgun.” They have really specific elections up there.

The old one didn’t fit in her purse, in case you were wondering.

The House votes to ban “partial-birth abortions.” With no exception for the health of the mother. The bill actually states as fact that it is never necessary for the health of the mother. Congress should be prosecuted for practicing both medicine and assholery without a license.

A gay couple got married in Vermont. Their home state, Connecticut, doesn’t recognize the marriage. So they can’t get a divorce, because while Vermont will marry people who don’t live there, it won’t give divorces to them.

A gift to the poor

The Homeland Security Agency debate goes on. I want to point again to the exclusion of the ATF and my suspicion, which no one else has joined in, that this was a sop to the gun lobby. Today’s NY Times notes that when Ashcroft ordered the FBI not to use gun ownership background checks to investigate terrorism after 9/11, and ordered the records destroyed, he was ignoring Justice’s legal advisers, who said it was perfectly legal to use those records, and then lied to Congress about it.

In 1992 Valentine Strasser took power in a coup in Sierra Leone to become the world’s youngest leader at 25. Today he is broke and lives with his mother. Good.

Under Alberto Fujimori, upwards of 230,000 poor rural Peruvians were forcibly sterilized. Betcha we don’t ever hear much more than that.

Ariel Sharon has been forced by world revulsion to reverse himself and say that if he’d known all those civilians would be killed when he ordered a plane to drop a bomb on an apartment building in the middle of a very crowded city at night (a 10th child’s body was found today, by the way) he wouldn’t have ordered it. This would be more credible if he hadn’t crowed about the great success of the operation yesterday, when he already knew of the deaths. It’s almost enough to sully the reputation of assassinations. “Infanticidal tit-for-tat,” the Guardian calls it.

The Guatemalan government is to make payments to members of the old death squads for their glorious service (the death squads have recently been quietly reactivating). This is the government that acts as a figleaf for former dictator and scum Efrian Rios Montt, one of many, well ok, two, scummy leaders forced out on my birthday.

This is the FBI. Back away from the pizza

As I write, I’m listening to the Senate hearings on Priscilla Owen, or St. Priscilla, as Mitch McConnell dubbed her. She doesn’t actually seem to be listening, which some would consider a problem in a judge. The number of times in which she answered a question that wasn’t actually asked, including the softball ones, and had to be herded back towards what was actually asked, suggested she wasn’t paying that much attention but was, perhaps, looking out the window, watching a squirrel frolic, or waiting for recess, or thinking about boys.

So how much information about us is being handed over to the government by companies we do business with? According to the Village Voice, one unnamed supermarket chain (actually a relatively low-level employee on his own) handed over data from those loyalty cards. So they can profile what a terrorist shops for. Hotels, car rental agencies, travel agencies have handed over information. They are trying to figure out what “normal” patterns are, and what marks you as a terrorist (ordering a lot of pizza delivered and paying with a credit card is a major indicator of terrorist activity. And if you want pineapple or anchovies on your pizza, you have no taste. According to the FBI.). The FBI was handed a list of 2 million certified divers. Without a subpoena even, because no one wants to be seen as uncooperative. Nor did the supermarket chain, or the travel companies or anyone, feel obligated to tell anyone what they did.

Today, a court in Florida finds Salvadoran generals responsible for torture and orders them to pay damages (if you pay for pizza the wrong way the FBI will be all over your ass, but don’t look for these thugs to be deported any time soon). Tomorrow, the US plans to block an enforcement protocol for the treaty against torture, because it might involve inspection of US prisons and detention centers, including Guantanamo.

Only Ariel Sharon would think it wise to call his assassination-by-air-strike a “great success” despite the deaths of 9 children.

Bush’s hubris grows. He now intends a “regime change” in Iran.

The new Right-wing Dutch government runs into a little trouble. The minister for emancipation and family affairs (!), a follower of the dead bald gay guy, turns out to have once worn a uniform and toted a gun in the militia on the former Dutch colony of Suriname, back when said militia was merrily murdering opposition activists. Not the sort of emancipation they had in mind. She has had to resign.

Remember the 1980 Iranian embassy siege in London? It was stormed by the SAS, which evidently had orders directly from Thatcher that there be no “problems” left over. In other words: take no prisoners. Or, as it turned out, execute the prisoners. No word on when Thatcher will be arrested.

If God wanted you to have a tattoo...

I find I haven’t previously mentioned Bush’s nominee to the 5th Circuit, Priscilla Owen. She can probably best be destroyed by tarring her with Enron. When she ran for the Texas Supreme Court, she took a few thousand of their money, and then ruled for them in a tax case worth $225,000 for them. The White House defends this behaviour by noting that 7 of the 9 justices took Enron money and that she had to raise millions to run for the court. So it’s the system that’s corrupt, not her. I know I feel better. But the real reason to destroy her is her fierce anti-abortionism. In a case on judicial bypass of parental notification, she wanted pregnant girls to show an awareness of the physiology of what would happen to the fetus, that they would suffer psychologically and that there were religious objections to abortion. The last, of course, is why she is not fit to serve on any bench. But it’s still the piddling Enron thing that could actually get her, so I say go for it.

Israel looks like backing off deporting the families of suicide bombers. Was this because the militant groups threatened to go after the families of Israeli officials? Was it because they finally realized how bad it made them look, like last week’s apartheid plan, like 2000's attempt to pass a law legalizing the taking of hostages by the government? Is it worse that they actually consider these things to be reasonable steps, or that they’re so out of step with the rest of the world that they don’t even realize how morally repulsive these ideas are to, you know, sane people?

A line from a Daily Telegraph story, which I think it would be more fun to present without explanation: A spokesman for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents said: “This is not something we’ve come across before. It’s not a good idea to put parts of your body into a computer scanner, but then kids will be kids.”

From the Times, news that there are some things people do with their bodies that Ken Starr does consider sacred and private:


July 23, 2002
Starr switches from Monica to body art
From Tim Reid in Washington

KENNETH STARR, the Republican lawyer who hounded President
Clinton with his exhaustive investigation of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, has a new case that this time goes to the heart of the Constitution: the right to get a tattoo.

Mr Starr, a solicitor-general when President Bush Sr was in the White House and a man known for his conservative bent, has taken up the fight of Ronald White, a body artist and punk rocker, who has fallen foul of South Carolina’s anti-tattoo law.

Mr White, 33, is taking his crusade to the US Supreme Court, claiming that needling skin with his designs of dragons, gargoyles and angels should be entitled to the same First Amendment free expression rights as other artists enjoy. In 1999, frustrated by the failure of South Carolina’s politicians to repeal their 1966 law - Oklahoma is the only other state to retain a ban - Mr White tattooed a man on television. The South Carolina authorities took a dim view. He was arrested, fined $2,500 (£1,620) and put on five years’ probation. For that time Mr White cannot carry pistols or rifles, get a drink in a bar or leave the state without informing his probation officer. He appealed to the state’s highest court, citing his constitutional rights, but lost.

Now, with the help of Mr Starr, who views his case as a serious First Amendment issue, he is asking the highest court in the land to decide the vexed issue of tattoos. “It’s our personal right as Americans to choose how we will express ourselves - on our bodies especially - and that is of the upmost importance to me,” Mr White said.

Mr Starr told the court, which is deciding whether to hear the case in full, that it was wrong to outlaw Mr White’s art “in a society that protects liquor advertising and pornography”. He told reporters, however, that he does not himself wear a tattoo, and has no intention of getting one.

Mr White’s nemesis thus far has been J. M. “Jake” Knotts, a South Carolina congressman and a former policeman and Vietnam veteran, who reached the House in 1994 on an anti- tattoo ticket, claiming that they are unclean, ungodly and bad for his state’s image.

“If God wanted you to have a tattoo, he’d have put your name on you,” Mr Knotts, known in the tattoo world as “Thou Shalt Knotts”, declares. [Personally, I feel the same thing about pants, but the police don’t agree with me.]

The tattoo ban dates from the 1960s, when a parlour in New York was blamed for a hepatitis outbreak. Most states banned the practice, but have since relented.

With remarkably little discussion, we are soon going to see the start of Operation TIPS, which stands for Tyrannical Informants Program... Oh, the only thing I can think of for S is Stasi, which is highly appropriate, but doesn’t really work. This is the brilliant idea of getting every postal carrier, cable guy, meter reader, truck driver and possibly crack dealer to report “suspicious behavior” to the government. 1 million informers. Which some say means you have the right to keep meter readers the hell off your property unless they have a warrant, since they’ve been deputized (the Post Office backed out of the program). So the next time you see a meter reader looking in your bathroom window, don’t worry, he’s probably just looking for Al Qaeda. And here’s me writing political manifestos on my computer at 5 in the morning; that’s not suspicious, is it?

Speaking of fascism, Israel has been rounding up the families of suicide bombers to deport them into the vast concentration camp that is the Gaza Strip. Speaking of Israeli responses to terrorism, I caught a couple of minutes of the tv movie of the Antebbe raid on cable tonight, looking to spot my great-uncle, who played Scared Jew #3, before I gave up. OK, that has nothing much to do with anything, but it’s these personal touches that distinguish these writings from Mother Jones.

Yet another use for cow shit

Bush predicts--or possibly orders--that the SEC will clear Cheney.

Bush is firing (or kicking sideways) his gay AIDS adviser. It is suggested that this was because he advocated that gay & bisexual men use condoms. Well, that’s what it says in the NY Times. He was also a critic of the ridiculous abstinence-only sex ed. policies this admin loves (chastely of course) so much.

London Times headline: “Horses Mark Bomb Anniversary.” These are horses, Echo and Yetti, who survived an IRA bomb attack 20 years ago.

Americans, many of them, are claiming political asylum in Canada, from persecution for their use of medical marijuana. 800 Canadians have permits to grow or use marijuana. In the 1960s the Flying Burrito Brothers sang of
“heading for the nearest foreign border/ Vancouver may be just my kind of town/ ‘Cos they don’t need the kind of law and order/ That tends to keep a good man underground.”

From the Belfast Sunday Life, a response to the IRA’s apology this week for accidentally killing and wounding a few hundred people:

A statement issued by a spokesman on behalf on the ‘non-combatant’ people of Northern Ireland:

“‘During several years of armed conflict waged on our behalf by a variety of paramilitary groups, there were many incidents during which we civilians severely inconvenienced our tireless freedom fighters and jeopardised their vital operations. These incidents include: people setting off booby traps which were not intended for them, bearing a slight similarity to ‘legitimate targets’, living in the wrong area, obscuring the targets of snipers by walking recklessly across their own streets, and generally being in the wrong place at the wrong time. While it was never our intention to be killed or seriously wounded, the reality is that on a number of occasions, this was the consequence of our actions. We would therefore offer our sincere apologies’.”

A Hindu nationalist group says people can protect themselves against nuclear attack by smearing themselves with cow dung.

And the new Indian president, as predicted, is fake-Doctor A P J Abdul Kalam, nuclear scientist and vegetarian (because it’s bad to kill a pig, but not to kill 30 million Pakistanis). In fact, President Kalam is on tv right now. Oh my god, he’s covered in cow shit, run for the hills everybody, save yourselves, oh the humanity!

A very sensitive part of its geography

The Spanish fight back in the world’s silliest war, over the uninhabited Parsley Island, occupied a couple of days ago by a few (six, I believe) Moroccans with tents. The Spanish actually sent in the special forces, with attack helicopters and gunboats. According to the Spanish defence minister, “Spain was attacked by force in a very sensitive part of its geography.” Well, that can be very painful. The Times, jokingly I think, calls Morocco’s action the first occupation of Western European soil since WW II. The ownership of the island is actually pretty vague, but given Spain’s attitude towards Gibraltar, the Basques and Catalonia, and Morocco’s continuing illegal occupation of the Western Sahara, I’d say the colonialist impulse is still strong in both countries, so fuck ‘em. Or to put it another way, I say it’s parsley, and I say to hell with it.

Today is the 100th anniversary of the air conditioner, and the first day in a while it’s been cool enough not to need it.

The British government blames its failure to cut teenage pregnancies on the public’s “giggly” attitude towards sex. In other words, and explicitly, they are blaming Benny Hill. Benny’s father sold condoms for a living, by the way (there is a large biography just out, if you can imagine wanting to read such a thing).

The Republicans in Congress have loaded up the bill to tighten up the Bermuda loophole with tax breaks to businesses (designed to help them transfer American jobs overseas) worth 10 times as much as the loophole. You can’t make this stuff up.

Click for the Miami Herald’s report on what happened to all of those Bushies who participated in the post-election fight in Florida. Would you believe that at least 50 of them were given government jobs? Of course you would!

A powerful asset

The Israeli cabinet backs off the apartheid plan. For now.

The US is not only training a new central Afghan army, but also little proxy units to go after Al Qaida. These units are connected with local warlords and not under the central government’s control, and are paid more (by the US, I’m assuming), which means that the central army training programs are being deserted (at least 1/3). So the US is not only helping create private armies, but actively undermining its own puppet central government.

Two of the NY Times columnists in the Tuesday paper focus on Bush’s past economic history, Kristof noting that when the Rangers coerced Arlington into seizing private property for their ballpark, they added to the list properties they wanted to re-sell for a profit (after getting them at compulsory knock-down prices). Krugman focuses on the funds of the U of Texas, which Bush effectively privatized and whose dealings he made secret, so that many (unprofitable) deals were made with cronies, one of whom was Bush himself. He also notes that Bush’s fellow-owners of the Rangers gave him $12 million more than his investment entitled him to, out of the goodness of their hearts, and not because he was the son of the presidents. This is all familiar if you read Molly Ivins’s columns, but bears repeating.

Bush, meanwhile, is calling the current economic slump a “hangover” after an “economic binge.” Far be it for me to contradict Dubya on a subject he knows so much about, hangovers, but what’s he suggesting? That the economic growth of the Clinton years was unhealthy? That all stocks are horribly over-valued and need to come down? That the boast that everyone is a stock-holder now suggests that everyone is a drunken rube now? Actually, the truth is that Clinton’s Justice Dept was even less likely to punish corporate crime than the previous admin (or environmental crimes or...). Is he suggesting that Clinton was soft on white collar criminals? It would be amusing to hear him say it aloud. And rare indeed to hear him say “Clinton” out loud.

When Bush sold his Harken stocks, it was 2 months after he’d signed a promise not to for 6 months. This makes his claim that his sale was unrelated to insider knowledge about the company’s crappy performance, and that he’d always intended to sell to finance the Rangers deal, is that much less believable. The Bushies say that the promise was related to a planned public stock offering and that when it fell through the promise no longer needed to be kept.
Which would mean that Bush knew that the company was in trouble, so even their explanation points to insider trading.

Cheney, who did pretty much the same exact thing with Halliburton stock, is being sued, but, according to Ari Fleischer, “The Vice-President continues to be a powerful asset for the country and the President.” Another example of bad accountancy. There may also be a little fuss over the billions a division of Halliburton is now earning providing support services for the military, at much more money than it would cost the Pentagon to do it itself. The company got into this business after Cheney, the Elder Bush’s defense secretary, changed the rules to allow it...

The government gets John Walker Lindh to plead guilty, armed only with an illegal confession, a raftload of false charges they could never have proven in court, the knowledge that he’d be convicted in this environment whether they proved their charges or not, and a judge hand-picked for his willingness to allow in unconstitutional evidence. The system worked. He pleaded guilty to carrying hand grenades in Afghanistan, which I find hard to believe is against American law, and working with the Taliban, which ditto. Also, he’s supposed to cooperate in giving intelligence to the government. If little Johnny Taliban knows anything that the CIA still doesn’t know, you have to be wondering what they’ve been doing the last 10 months.

Bush proposes to set up cells to think like terrorists and plan attacks. And in a couple of years they’ll have skills they can take with them into the private sector.

From the Telegraph: A quadriplegic man is suing the Wildside strip club in West Palm Beach, Florida, for allegedly breaking the law by not providing wheelchair access to the lap-dancing room.

According to SEC documents, Bush did in fact know that Harken was in trouble when he sold his stocks–in fact, it looked likely to go bankrupt. That is insider trading. Rather than the SEC exonerating him, as he claims, an internal memo said the lack of action ‘must in no way be construed as indicating that the party has been exonerated or that no action may ultimately result’. Incidentally, you’ll remember Bush claims (now) that it was the fault of his lawyers that his documents didn’t get filed. So how did he reprimand those lawyers? One of them is now ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

Committing public order offenses with his feet

Bush has gotten bored with going after the corporations, and thinks everyone else should be too: “I believe people have taken a step back and asked, ‘What’s important in life?’ You know, the bottom line and this corporate America stuff, is that important? Or is serving your neighbor, loving your neighbor like you’d like to be loved yourself?” Of course George has usually had much richer neighbors than the rest of us.

And his friends can afford their own drugs, which is why he’s opposing Democratic plans for drug coverage for the old. He says the plan, by making existing drugs affordable, would cut back on the incentive for drug companies to come up with new drugs that people can’t afford. Come to think of it, his argument is that the plan would be too expensive, but drugs under it would be too cheap.

New in the South African version of Sesame Street: an HIV-positive Muppet. Maybe the Cookie Monster can provide some marijuana brownies.

Guardian headline: Police Praise IRA for ‘Calming Clashes’. I’m assuming that here “calming” is used as a verb rather than an adjective.

Six Afghan governors are demanding that the US military get their permission before conducting military operations in their states. Good luck, guys. This alliance actually looks like a de facto separatist Pashtun region.

The Congressional hearings on the Heimat Security Agency suggest that the legislative branch has begun to realize what a power grab the proposal was. In the name of flexibility, the Bushies are trying to wrest from Congress the ability to shift funds and personnel at will. In addition to scaling down Congressional oversight, it would also ride rough-shod over civil service rules, or to put it another way, screw some large unions that generally support the D’s.

So the chair of the New Mexican Republican party gets a donation from someone he won’t name and insists he doesn’t really know who the guy was acting for, in order to bribe the Green Party (which refused to play) to run spoiler candidates for the United States Congress. This should be a big deal, but it won’t be, like earlier this year when I was the only one in the state complaining that Gray Davis was running ads to influence the primary of another party.


Speaking of which, the aptly named State Dept under-sec for Latin America, Otto Reich, tells Bolivia which of their candidates for president they will not be allowed to vote for, if they know what’s good for them. The ambassador tried that before the first round, and the guy’s numbers went way up.

I was pleased that the story I sent on the 2nd about the gang-rape ordered by the Pakistani local council got so much press, for a couple of days anyway. But the story goes on. If you’ll recall, the rape was ordered as punishment for another family member, her younger brother, who was accused of dating a member of a higher caste. In fact, he was accused of raping her. He was 11, she 30. In actual fact, it was he who was raped, by 3 men of an upper-caste. To cover that up, the 30-year old made her accusation. So the story just keeps getting scummier.

This week’s Private Eye cover is entitled New Osama Threat to America, with a picture of bin Laden saying, “Forget terrorism, I’m going to become an accountant.”

So police in LA (Inglewood) are caught on videotape beating up a black guy. That’s what I hate about summer: nothing but reruns on tv.

The papers tell me that the US has backed down on its demand for immunity for peacekeepers from the international court. In fact, it changed its demand from immunity in perpetuity to immunity for a year, which would be renewed annually.

Somehow the papers that Bush says would show his innocence in insider trading are in the possession of Harken, not the SEC, and Harken ain’t making them public. Perhaps it’s time to review how Bush the Elder managed never to answer any questions on Iran-Contra.

Another unanswered Harken question is who bought Bush’s stock from him. This is secret. Some experts are quoted saying this is common and it doesn’t matter, but there are two problems with that: 1) someone handed a large profit to the son of the president of the United States, so they might have an ulterior motive, 2) someone lost a lot of money due to Bush’s insider trading.

The European Court of Human Rights says that Britain must give full recognition of the femaleness of a transsexual, including the right to marry. More worryingly, women in Britain can retire at 60 instead of 65, so... do you really really want to retire early...?

Britain will introduce extra maternity pay and paternal leave exactly 9 months from today....

Flirtshirt

Jon Stewart of the Daily Show had the best reaction to Bush’s speech on corporate crime. After each proposal, they cut to Stewart’s stunned face--You mean convicted CEOs could become CEOs again? You mean they don’t have to attest to the accuracy of accounts now? You mean auditors can have conflicts of interest now? You mean if they profit from false accountancy, they can keep the money now? Are there are rules on Wall Street, he asked, can they just kill a guy for lookin’ at them?

Maybe it would be safer not to test that out.

By the way, Chimp Boy, we want to see the SEC case file on your role in Harken.

It’s been, what, 2 days since the Israeli Cabinet voted to institute racial segregation. Notice the wave of indignation from American politicians? Didn’t think so.

On news today, saw an Arthur Anderson promotional video from 1996 in which the company is praised by Dick Cheney. Priceless (although Arthur Anderson would put it in the plus column).

In US planning for war with Iraq, there arises the problem of what to do with Saddam Hussein, if he’s ever captured. Obviously not the international court. Another country-specific war crimes court? Current thinking is to let our Iraqi puppets set up a kangaroo court. Don’t expect the UN Security Council to have much to say about this: evidently the US is already parceling out the contracts to Iraqi oilfields like so many party favors.

London Times headline Thursday: Jordan to Let US Use Bases for War on Iraq. Daily Telegraph headline Thursday: Jordan Rejects Invasion Plan. The fix is only half in, I guess (man, I’m talking in nothing but clichés today). The hope seems to be that US troops will use Jordan, but that the Jordanian people don’t notice.

Mafiosi in prison in Italy are going on hunger strike to protest the prison regime. Joke for fans of The Sopranos: What, no fuckin’ ziti?

Daily Telegraph article:

T-shirts with hidden appeal

A Berlin designer has launched a range of T-shirts impregnated with pheromones, hormone-based scents said to attract the opposite sex. Anna Figoluschka, 26, says her “flirtshirt” gives its wearer an advantage when trying to stand out in a crowd. T-shirts with a blue anchor design contain male pheromones and those with a pink heart have female pheromones. Hannah Cleaver, Berlin

Confidence Game

Bush used the word “confidence” 5 times in his press conference. And many more in today’s speech. Which as I understand it put all the blame for corporate greed on the “late 90s.” I suppose that in the era-bashing department it makes a refreshing change from Republicans bitching about the 1960s.

Here’s a sentence you don’t see everyday, from a Daily Telegraph story:

A passenger who tried to smuggle her pet chameleon into Britain by wearing it as a hat was foiled by customs officers.

At his press conference, Bush was asked why he was not showing up at the NAACP annual meeting. He said, “Let’s see. There I was sitting around the table with foreign leaders looking at Colin Powell and Condi Rice...” before tailing off. Think Colls and Condi will set him right on why that was a stupid response? Me
neither.

The first article following is on Bush’s personal finances, the second compares the same to the standards he claims to be setting for others.

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?