Boycotting Belgium, impotent snit-fits, cry babies, spears and Volvos

A State Dept guy on McNeil-Lehrer said Bush himself won’t be publicly criticizing every single Middle East atrocity, because that would “reduce the impact.” I don’t know about that: I find that Bush is good for a laugh no matter how often you hear him.

With a Daily Telegraph headline today “Israel Strikes Back,” this would be an opportune time to point out again the tendency of the media to phrase these things as if all of Israel’s acts were responses to Palestinian acts of aggression.

Croatia refuses to sign the immunity agreement demanded by the US. Good for them. Which is more than you can say for the Security Council. France and Germany expressed their displeasure by failing to turn up to vote. So France has all the dubious pleasures of an impotent snit-fit without actually having the balls to use its veto.

“Impotent snit-fit”?

On roughly the same issue, the US is threatening to “boycott Belgium.”

A Welsh politician who was “politician of the year” is found dead in a massage parlor. Not as good as the German pol, under investigation, who committed suicide by jumping out of a plane last week.

Glad to see Bush’s involvement has created peace in the Middle East. Now he just has to put on the tux and collect his Nobel. Or not. Anyway, Sharon calls Palestinian leaders “cry-babies” for complaining about Israeli retaliations [see above on “retaliation”]. Speaking of cry-babies, no word today on the 8-year old Sharon put into critical condition with a rocket attack yesterday. Guess that wasn’t important enough for any reporter to follow up. Or to get the kid’s name. Sharon did manage to kill another couple of kids today (one of them 3 years old) with another rocket attack on a busy highway. So maybe Sharon can just shut his mouth about cry-babies. This time, the Bushies conspicuously failed to condemn the move. The Guardian comments that Palestinians see rocket attacks on populated areas as the equivalent of suicide bombings.

In Britain, the Daily Mail is holding a “referendum”--mail-in coupons, phone in, email, boxes in shops--to demand a referendum on Europe. Of course this is the sort of thing that is to be taken as seriously as any internet poll or an election in Florida. But in what may be the most sarcastic journalistic exercise I’ve ever seen, the Guardian hired professional international election observers to monitor it.

Speaking of toy democracies, California may really be heading for a recall of the governor. It’s hard to tell because the people working for this may be lying about how many signatures they have. They can do this because they’re evidently not required to hand them in to the secretary of state within a few days like they would with voter registration forms. The whole thing is dangerously undemocratic because 1) we just had an election in November, 2) if they get enough signatures to force a recall election, it’s bound to depose Davis because it’s off-year so the turnout will be low, and because the recall and the next election are on the same ballot. That is, at the same time you have to vote on whether to recall the Gray Boy, and who would replace him. It’s the combination that badly distorts the democratic process: only R’s are likely to run, because no D wants to look like they’re endorsing recall, and Davis isn’t allowed on the ballot. 3) Given the high cost of running a campaign in California, having this go on a few months after a gubernatorial race distorts the process in favor of those who can raise money fast--i.e., the evil. In fact, Darryl Issa has already been caught breaking campaign finance laws to fund this thing. It only takes I believe 900,000 signatures to start a process that’s heavily weighted towards wealthy Republicans. The recall provision of the state constitution has never been used, and would be a serious blow to the legitimacy of government in this state.

Sort of like giving the new UC president a 10% raise over the outgoing one while reg fees are going up 25%.

Nicholas Kristof in today’s NY Times eviscerates the claim leaked to the Post that the CIA never passed on its conclusions about the fakedness of the Niger uranium forgeries to the White House, although he fails to use the phrase ineffable twaddle, not having as much class as I do.

A piece in Salon suggests that if a Republican Supreme Court justice, which is pretty much all of them, retires without a compelling reason, like being dead, or really close to it, it will raise again the legitimacy issues of the 2000 election. Like the Court’s decision then, it will be and look political.

A good article on the “strategic ambiguity” of Bush admin statements, the way they structure arguments to imply strongly things that they can’t actually claim, like that we actually have discovered Iraqi WMDs or that Hussein and Al Qaeda were linked, or that cutting taxes will lead to increased revenue (the Laffer curve, for those who can recall the Reagan administration). Since this article points out how Bush’s speeches are structured so as to deceive people dumber than yourselves, it’s a must-read so that you can detect what’s going on in those speeches, things that go *under* your head and are unnoticed because you didn’t fall for them.

Incidentally, I’ve only seen one poll on this, but Americans seem to think that we have discovered WMDs in Iraq.

Salon on the record of the incredibly far-right record of Alabama attorney general William Pryor, nominated by Bush to the 11th Circuit. I mentioned him a couple of months ago.

The Romanian government claims there was no Holocaust there in 1940-45 (actually, 250,000 Jews were killed or sent to concentration camps).

“Workers sacked from a Volvo dealership in Indonesia attacked their Swedish boss with spears after negotiations over severance pay went awry, police said yesterday.” That story wouldn’t be funny if it weren’t Volvo.

US soldiers killed 100 Iraqis today, in what McNeil-Lehrer described as the worst fighting since the war ended. I don’t think I need to point out the problem with that sentence.

Also watch out for the occasional use of the word “terrorist” to describe attacks on US troops. Attacks on occupying forces cannot be described as terrorist.

Guardian on marriages in Israel, possibly the only “democratic” state that doesn’t allow civil marriages, just an Orthodox one in which the wife is said to be the property of the husband, only the husband can seek a divorce, and if he dies, his brother has the right to marry her if she is childless (or use that provision to blackmail her).

Four years ago, Bhutan became the last nation on the planet to get television. Naturally, the country turned to shit: drugs, crime.

More signs of the apocalypse: Reebok just signed on a basketball star, aged 3½.

I've been wanting to call something "ineffable twaddle" since I was 9

Paul Bremer, Viceroy and Grand Vizier of Iraq, has drawn up rules for censoring newspapers and shutting down ones he doesn’t like. Sadly, the only story on this, by Robert Fisk of the Indy, who doesn’t actually have many details, is itself only available to subscribers of their premium service. And me, so I’ll quote at some length. He suggests a story that might be censored: the reappearance of drugs for sale in Baghdad. The drugs come from Afghanistan, once again the number one world supplier of opium. Also:

Out at Baghdad airport, the Americans are now holding 3,000 prisoners without any intention of putting them on trial or charging them with offences. Where is Tariq Aziz, the former deputy prime minister? The Americans say they have him. But we don't know where. What's he being asked? About Saddam's weapons of mass destruction? Or - my own guess - how much he knows about America's close relations with Saddam after 1978? In fact, Aziz knows far too much about that shameful alliance; after all, he met Donald Rumsfeld several times. One thing's for sure. There'll be no trial for Tariq Aziz. Keeping him silent will be the first priority. But that's not something the Iraqis should learn about. Censor the story.

While we're still on the subject of Baghdad airport, it's important to note that American forces at the facility are now coming under attack every night - I repeat, every night - from small arms fire. So are American military planes flying into the airbase. Some US aircrews have now adopted the old Vietnam tactic of corkscrewing tightly down on to the runways instead of risking sniper fire during a conventional final approach. The source is impeccable (it's within the Third Infantry Division, if the int. boys want to know). But what will that tell the Iraqis? That the Americans cannot keep order? That a resistance movement is well under way? Censor the story.

A Canadian court struck down the country’s discrimination against homosexuals in its marriage law, and two men immediately take advantage to get married. I dunno, I’m picturing plaid shirts, those hats with the flaps, I’m a lumberjack and I’m ok...

From the Guardian: “The nation's most famous tourist attraction sallied forth from Windsor Castle to meet her little people yesterday and found them small, squat-headed and remarkably immobile. ... Dressed in yellow check, Her Majesty even came toe to face with a miniature version of herself, dressed in yellow bricks.” Yes, the royal family goes to Legoland. (sadly, no pictures.) (OK, I’ve checked other sites for pictures, and there are no funny ones).

Last week I made some comment about waiting for the Islamic-loon-governed state in Pakistan to ban kites. Well, uh, actually, Punjab province is having a legitimate kite problem. Seems these idiots have their kites fight each other, with metallic or glass-coated twines, and they’ve also accidentally killed a few kids, and caused power outages. They have been warned that this will be treated as homicide, subject to the death penalty. Which will teach me for making jokes about kites.

A headline somewhere said that Sharon is “not apologetic” for the botched assassination attempt that involved firing 7 missiles at a crowded highway in Gaza. OK, Sharon being apologetic would be the ultimate man bites dog story, but for fuck’s sake, there are dead children and an 8-year old on life support, so maybe something in the way of an apology might not be completely out of line?

The most embarrassing part of the fake case against Iraq was the claim that it was trying to buy uranium in Niger. The latest line, here, is that the CIA knew it was bullshit and forgot to tell anyone, even after Bush cited it in the State of the Union Address, or the umpteen other times Bushies talked about it. Balderdash. Ineffable twaddle. No way. I’d refute it at length, but it’s too absurd to require it. And doesn’t even begin to answer, or even ask, the question of how the hilariously incompetent fake evidence came to be manufactured. The D’s seem to be picking up this issue, excruciatingly slowly, but the R’s are determined to block open hearings. Wonder how the commission on 9/11 intelligence failures is going? If I had to sit through the Clinton impeachment and all the Whitewater crap, I want payback.

You know what country the US pressured last week, by a threat to cut off aid, into signing one of those deals immunizing Americans from extradition to the International Court? Bosnia. Takes evil shitheadery to an almost Zen level, doesn’t it?

It’s going after the other ex-Yugoslav states as well, including Serbia, although Slovenia has told them to shove it. The American ambassador to Croatia published a letter threatening their $19 million in aid.

Richard Perle suggests bombing North Korea’s nuclear reactor, like Israel did in Iraq in 1981. Oh good.

With time we'll find out

A good piece on the politics of the Bush administration, how policies are always subordinate to political ends, the disempowering of certain Democratic contributors/constituencies, and the permanent impotence of the Democratic party.

Saudi Arabia’s religious police are being made to attend seminars in “communication skills” and “success strategies.” They are told to smile more (presumably as they beat unveiled schoolgirls back into burning buildings). I am not making this up.

Blair will refuse to appear before Foreign Affairs Committee inquiry into his lies about Iraqi weapons.

Sharon has started to destroy unoccupied, “unauthorized”settler outposts. Big woop. At the same time, he destroyed 13 actual homes of Palestinians. Guess which one got headlines (and only the London Times used a word like “vacant” to describe the outposts), and which one was buried, if reported at all?

Jose Padilla yesterday celebrated his first anniversary in military custody without being charged with a crime. We don’t know how he celebrated, because he is not allowed access to lawyers (what would be the point? laws don’t apply to “enemy combatants,” even if they are US citizens) or family.

So far, 37 countries have submitted to the US’s demand that they exempt Americans from extradition to the International Court. Which is not to say that such agreements are actually legal under international law. Of course since presumably all of these treaties are bilateral, we could soon be hosting a whole lot of exiled war criminals. The US has just threatened the EU for the crime of opposing these agreements.

Bush logic: “Iraq had a weapons program. Intelligence throughout the decade showed they had a weapons program. I am absolutely convinced with time we'll find out that they did have a weapons program.” Note the slide from absolute certainty to an acknowledgment of a complete absence of proof. Also, what decade? Also, he is now claiming a “weapons program” rather than actual weapons. Go back and read that quote again, there’s a sort of grace in its stupidity.

Suffering from total over-branding

The residents of Fallujah took their hammers and their axes and tore down a police station the American troops were occupying. I love it; a mini Berlin Wall event. Fallujah is turning into Belfast without the politeness, with repeated attacks on the troops and aggressively destructive searches of residents’ houses. This is of course the town where troops shot dead 18 protesters in two days last month, and it’s never quieted down. And at no point did the US military ever think it might be a good idea to send Arabic translators to the most tense spot in occupied Iraq.

Texas has passed a mandatory pledge of allegiance in schools and in the very same bill a minute of prayer.

Remember the Segway scooter, that everyone laughed about? The technology that keeps those things upright on 2 wheels can be used in wheelchairs, allowing them to do wheelies--which in practice means they can go up stairs and puts occupants at face level with everybody else (cost = $33,000).

The “germ” that the two mobile labs in Iraq were actually designed to produce, evidently, is hydrogen. They simply lack the equipment and layout necessary for biological production. For a start, they weren’t air-tight, so they would have killed anyone who tried to use them for that purpose. So they were actually to fill up artillery balloons (like weather balloons, so you know where to aim to account for wind)(the British sold this stuff to them in 1987).

Don’t mention the war: the new German ambassador to Britain is trying to “rebrand” Germany. The organizer of a conference to this end says that Germany “continues to suffer from the total ‘over-branding’ which the Nazis had imposed on the country”. Those darn Nazis and their marketing excesses!

Remember how in the early Clinton administration he kept inviting Sharon Stone to the White House, obviously hoping for a little of that Happy birthday, Mr President action? Well now rumor has it that Ms Stone will play Hillary, another woman he does not get to have sex with, in the film of her book. You could almost feel sorry for Billy Bob.

God himself will not permit it

A few days ago I wondered how Bush could go to Iraq without getting an embarrassing reception. Silly me. He flew over Iraq for 66 minutes, never actually setting foot on it. According to a White House official, this demonstrates that Iraq is free. In a speech, Bush said, in a statement so fatuous that further comment would be pointless: “But one thing is certain: no terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime because the Iraqi regime is no more.”

A heart-warming interview with Saudi Arabia’s chief executioner.

For the first time since the end of the Korean War, US troops have been moved away from the border between the Koreas. Evidently they think that either North Korea is likely to start a war--or we are. Either way, the North Koreans are likely to see this as preparation for a strike on their nuclear facilities, which is not good.

It’s a little unclear to me exactly how it happened that 8 million poor families got left out of the tax-cut bill. Was it an accident or a bargaining chip? DeLay explained that there were many bigger priorities than poor people (the many hours spent in the House debating another attempt to outlaw flag-burning, perhaps?), and then tried to hold the poor kids hostage to yet another tax increase for the rich. The Senate at any rate has voted to restore the money to the poor families, and, yes, to those in the $100,000-150,000 range (given that the original tax cut was sold precisely and repeatedly as a tax cut for every family, they never really had the right to cut some families out, but then this is the government that sold a war on Iraq based on non-existent WMDs; Big Shrug)(some R’s said that they could neglect the poor, as in the last bill, because they weren’t taxpayers; when the R’s talk about taxes, they always neglect to count Social Security and sales tax, the regressive taxes, and concentrate on the progressive taxes) (and as long as I’m randomly putting thoughts in parentheses because I’m too lazy to construct a proper argument, the tax cut increased the deduction businesses can take for vehicles to $100,000 if they weigh over 6,000 pounds--no SUV left behind). According to the Times, Trent Lott voted for the bill “but as he did so he stuck his tongue out, put his finger in his mouth and made a gagging sound, indicating his apparent distaste for the bill.” Or possibly just behaving like one of the children having their tax credit restored

A UN court made a half-assed attempt to arrest Liberian dictator Charles Taylor for war crimes Wednesday. They had kept the indictment secret, waiting to spring it on him when he was out of the country, but unfortunately the country he was in was Ghana, which let him go, claiming they received the indictment too late. Nonsense. If there’s one thing I know about west African countries, that we all know, it’s that they have email. Taylor: “To call the president of Liberia a war criminal? God himself will not permit it.”

On the heals of the Justice Dept inspector general’s report of abuses of immigrant detainees, Ashcroft demands yet more powers of indefinite detention, the creation of new crimes including simply training with a designated terrorist organization (recent months have shown that the Bush admin rewards governments that do favors with us by adding organizations opposed to those governments to the list, so there’s not just the “one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter” problem--the list is a purely political construct) without actually doing anything, and providing “material support” to such organizations, as some of us on this list have done for Salvadoran or anti-apartheid groups. And death penalties, he wants more of those.

Here’s a story from the world of museums. The prized exhibit at the York Archaeological Resource Centre is a thousand-year-old piece of Viking shit, said to be the largest complete example of preserved human shit by those who are experts in such things. They are trying to put it back together after its display stand crashed, breaking it into three pieces. The article will tell you everything you want to know about what this gentleman ate, the health of his bowels, and, as an added bonus, there’s a picture.

Shut up

I’m told this panel discussion, with Al Franken, Molly Ivins and Bill O’Reilly, is worth watching. The link is linked to video of the event, or it airs on C-SPAN2 Sunday. And when I say discussion, I understand that at one point O’Reilly yells Shut up at Franken.

The US occupiers in Iraq tried to change the uniform of the Iraqi police, but they refused to wear... baseball caps.

I was going to make fun of Bush for saying continuous when he meant contiguous, but then I found out he didn’t even know his microphone was on. That was also the period in which he made reference to “almighty God.” I could have done without the constant references to the “Holy Land,” too.

Given the accusation that Arafat says one thing in pidgin English and another in Arabic, it should be noted that Ariel Sharon’s speech at the conference had been corrected by his office (his talk of a Palestinian state didn’t mean an independent one, and did mean a demilitarized one, etc etc) literally before he made it.

An interesting article by Naomi Klein (the link is to the Guardian, but evidently it has also appeared in the Nation) on Paul Bremer suggests that he is a one-man IMF, down-sizing the Iraqi government in the guise of de-Baathization, opening the beleaguered economy to international competition that will destroy local competition. Commenting on Bremer’s creation of a company, “Crisis Consulting Practice,” one month after 9/11 to take advantage of the atmosphere of fear (which I have alluded to), the author notes that “Like so many of the men who populate the Bush foreign policy landscape, Bremer sees war as a business opportunity.” “Many point out that Paul Bremer is no expert on Iraqi politics. But that was never the point. He seems to be an expert at profiting from the war on terror, and at helping US multinationals make money in far off places where they are both unpopular and unwelcome. In other words, he is perfect for the job.”

G'day, your majesty. Put another dual-sex shrimp on the barbie

The US is printing new dinars for use in Iraq, complete with portrait of Saddam Hussein. Could be worse: In Rummy we trust.


Today’s NYT reports that a Florida judge has appointed a guardian to decide whether that severely retarded woman should have an abortion. Which is odd, because I’m pretty sure I read last week that she had one. The article (from AP) has another omission, not even mentioning what the judge said about the state’s request he appoint a separate guardian for the fetus.

MBABANE, Swaziland (Reuters) --Swaziland's absolute monarch has singled out women wearing pants as the cause of the world's ills in a state radio sermon that also condemned human rights as an "abomination before God." "The Bible says curse be unto a woman who wears pants, and those who wear their husband's clothes. That is why the world is in such a state today," Mswati, ruler of the impoverished feudal nation of about one million, said late on Thursday.

Reuters neglects to add that Mswati is looking forward to his 10th marriage (I believe he adds a new one every year), to a woman he picked from a video of topless dancers.

After a bill is proposed in the Iowa legislature allowing a casino to be built near the Nebraska border. So Neb. state senator Pam Brown introduced a bill declaring war on Iowa.

As I said last week, the North West Province of Pakistan has introduced sharia law and compulsory prayers and is working on establishing a Taliban-style religious police. Can the banning of kites be far behind? Actually, what I think is going on is that they are being encouraged by Pakistan’s military leaders, as proof that democracy doesn’t work in Islamic countries, so that they will get no shit from the rest of the world when they crack down and permanently shelve plans to restore civilian democratic rule. You can already see the first steps.

On the other hand, Saudi Arabia bans Michael Jackson music, so there may be something to this Islamic censorship stuff.

One of my oldest recurrent themes is the Bible translated into Ebonics, Klingon, Yorkshire, etc. And now, Aussie. "G'day, Your Majesty!" the three “eggheads from out east” said to the infant Jesus.

Best headline of the day, from the Times: “Scare over Dual-Sex Shrimps.” The effects of pollution. I have images of a seafood Crying Game going through my head.

A Mexican national bought a car from one of those government auctions in the US, and then drove it home. At the border, 119 pounds of marijuana were discovered in the car’s bumpers. He spent 3 months in jail and is now suing the government.

The Department of Justice’s Inspector General admits massive violations of the rights of immigrants detained after 9/11. Gee, no kidding. My favorite detail: the detention center at Brooklyn insists that they did tell prisoners that they were allowed one phone call a week. The contend that when prisoners were occasionally asked “Are you OK?” they should have understood that to mean “Do you want to place a legal telephone call this week?” Ah, text-message speak.

The Supreme Court refused to hear a class-action suit by people who were tricked into signing on for the military for 20 years by promises of free lifetime medical care. The circuit court had said that recruiters didn’t have the authority to make such promises, so the government isn’t legally bound to abide by them.

The Guardian made a suggestion for why Bush wants to make an impact in the Middle East--he wants to win the votes of Jews in Florida because he needs the moral victory of actually winning the state for real in 2004.

Perhaps these guys just like guns

Robert Fisk has some ideas about what Bush should see in Iraq when he visits this week (next week?).

(the Independent is now trying to charge for Fisk’s stories, which is why I’m directing you to a Pakistani newspaper for the same story. Sheesh.). Of course Bush will do none of those things, but you have to wonder how he’ll manage to do it without having to confront a single Iraqi, who might embarrass him by not playing his part (I say his because Iraqi women are rapidly disappearing behind the veil, as Allah intended).

Since writing my last email, I’ve gotten more and more pissed at Bush’s visit to Auschwitz which, thanks to KTEH’s near-constant fundraising knocking the BBC World broadcast off the air yet again this weekend, I have been fortunate not to see any pictures of, or I’d really have lost it. I thought I was being fairly restrained this week (for once) when the commandant of Guantanamo talked about setting up a death row and execution room in our little corner of Cuba, and I didn’t say anything about building furnaces to dispose of the bodies. I wouldn’t have been so restrained if I’d known Bush was going to go to another concentration camp and say Never again while weeping big ole tears. Yeah fine, it’s not on the same scale, yeah yeah disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer, but it’s still a concentration camp in which people are incarcerated indeterminately without benefit of law or trial.

The US has introduced a program of gun registration in Iraq. Has John Ashcroft been told? Today was the first day on which Iraqis were invited to register or turn in their weapons. No takers. I will give the following quote (from the Daily Telegraph) without comment: "It is difficult to know why the Iraqis have not responded," an American officer said at one police station. "We are here to help them clean up the city, but perhaps these guys just like guns."

Not all the protesters at Evian were negative. For ex: A Belgian student wearing a Jacques Chirac rubber mask said he was there to celebrate the amount of "good dope coming out of Afghanistan" since the war. For some people, the bong is not half empty, but half full.

At Evian, Bush had some wacky plan about stopping terrorism and WMDs. It seems to involve the US being authorized to stop any ships it wants to, and something about controlling all civil uses of radioactive materials--such as x-ray machines. When x-ray machines are outlawed, only outlaws will have x-ray machines.

All arbeit and no play makes George a dull boy

When I said it, it was a joke. But this, from the WaPo’s corrections section, is real: “The last name of National Spelling Bee winner Sai R. Gunturi was misspelled in a May 30 KidsPost article and on the front-page promo and caption.”

Bush, who said that his new logging policy was for environmental reasons, will drop a requirement that environmental studies be done before logging, including to find out whether it would affect endangered species.

Bush went to Auschwitz and emerged with this lesson: “hatred and aggression and murderous ambition are still alive in the world.” Uh, right, George....you didn’t mean yourself, did you? Just checking. He also came out convinced that everything he’s done in Iraq was somehow justified all over again by Auschwitz.

Speaking of low standards of proof, here is a good Post story about how standards of proof of an Iraqi WMD program, and the scale of that program itself, have been reduced by Bush to two trailers containing absolutely no physical evidence of bioweapons of any kind. Well, Blake saw the world in a grain of sand, but then he was a loon. As a Bob Graham spokesmodel said, "Surely they're not claiming we went to war to find two mobile labs." Which is at least one Democratic politician showing at least some guts (too bad it’s Graham, huh?)

The authorities in Honduras kill 69 prisoners following a prison riot, indeed most of them after they had surrendered. Naturally, given the number of dead, this received immediate and widespread attention worldwide... wait, this happened eight weeks ago? Oh.

Handling

The National Spelling Bee champion this year is once again someone whose name I couldn’t even begin to guess how to spell.

Joe Conason (in Salon) asks, regarding Rummy’s claim that Iraq may simply have destroyed all that weaponry to make him look bad, “Would such massive operations really have been possible without U.S. intelligence picking up communication of the necessary orders to Iraqi field commanders? Would U.S. satellites have failed to see any of that activity? And wouldn't someone among the officers captured or bribed by our military know the details of that operation?” He also points out that if those two trailers had really had anything to do with bioweapons (and there is literally no physical evidence that they did), as the Pentagon claims, someone would have had to go to an awful lot of effort to scrub them down, when they could much more easily have been blown up.

And Slate details how all those stories on WMDs Judith Miller ran in the NYT, leaked to her by defectors sponsored by Chalabi, as we now know, were wrong.

Also, all that bombing at the start of the war when they were trying to kill Saddam. Examination of the site (which seems to have taken an awfully long time to happen) shows that there was never a bunker there.

I don’t think I’ve talked about the resignation of the governor-general of Australia, who in his previous life as an Anglican archbishop covered up for paedophiles. Or, as Radio 4 in Britain so delicately phrased it, “The former Archbishop resigned following criticism of his handling of a convicted paedophile priest.”

The girls are told they can't slide down that pole onto anybody

After the State of the Union Address, I comprehensively trashed Bush’s AIDS initiative. Naturally, it got worse in practice, as Bush hasn’t come close to keeping his spending promises, and is cutting AIDS spending domestically. And there are more bad bits, like forbidding any projects that work with prostitutes, who certainly could have nothing to do with the spread of AIDS, 1/3 of spending must be on abstinence (this is an international program; it’s bad enough that so much of the spending goes through religious groups, why are we trying to proselytize a particular model of sexuality as well?), and religious groups can reject any AIDS-fighting strategy they object to. And some idiot is trying to force the countries getting AIDS aid to take genetically modified as well, because the AIDS victims are looking a little skinny and need the nourishment; also, they’re easier to find if they glow in the dark.

Here’s an interesting bit from the Post story:

He also subtly cast the AIDS initiative in the context of the conservative, antiabortion agenda, saying: "We believe in the value and dignity of every human life."

The Post is absolutely right about the underlying message of that sort of statement, of course, but isn’t it interesting that when Bush talks about the value and dignity of human life, we all know that he only means fetuses?

The Supreme Court legalizes torture, or what Clarence Thomas calls “mere compulsive questioning.” Without Miranda, yet, so long as it is not used in prosecution. The cops shot a guy in the back and head and asked him questions while he screamed for medical attention.

Before the invasion of Iraq, it was claimed that it possessed 10,000 liters of anthrax, up to 6,500 chemical munitions, at least 80 tons of mustard gas, sarin, botulinum toxin, etc etc. We were told that Iraq had these weapons ready to be used within 45 minutes. But today, Rumsfeld said that they may have destroyed all of that before the war started (a reporter asked him how the hopelessly incompetent Iraqi army managed to get just this one thing right; he didn’t really answer). Britain’s former foreign minister and leader of the House of Commons Robin Cook has demanded that Blair admit he was wrong to go to war. And that’s someone on his side, so you can imagine what members of the opposition are saying. I’m expecting Democrats here to make the same demand of GeeDubya, just any...day.....now.

You know, I think Americans should feel dissed that the Bushies didn’t even go to the trouble to plant some WMD evidence. They don’t even have that much respect for us.

An awful lot of soldiers seem to be getting ambushed, shot at with RPGs, hand grenades and plain old bullets this week. Robert Fisk of the Independent asks “Isn't it time we called this a resistance war in Iraq?”

A charge to keep I have

I mentioned that Bush is fund-raising now. Here are some excerpts from an email he sent to my cat, asking for $2,000, with appropriate snide comments (in caps).

“My goal is to build an ownership society where American families own their own homes, their own health coverage, their own retirement accounts and, if they want, their own businesses.” AND, IF THEY WANT, THEIR OWN SLAVES.

And we are working to change the culture from one that too often said, "if it feels good, do it," to a responsibility society where people know they are accountable for what they do, for the children they bring into the world, and for loving a neighbor like they'd like to be loved themselves. UNLESS IT’S REALLY KINKY.

....
To achieve these goals, America must be united. I have worked to bring dignity and honor to the White House and to change the tone in Washington. I have asked Democrats and Republicans to join with me in achieving great purposes. OF COURSE I DUMPED THAT DIGNITY IN A SECOND WHEN THEY TOLD ME I COULD LAND ON AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER AT A COST OF ONLY $1 MILLION.

One of the paintings I have selected for the Oval Office portrays a man on horseback, leading a charge up a steep hill. His face is full of purpose and determination, and it is clear he expects to get the job done. The painting is called "A Charge to Keep," based on a Methodist hymn that's a favorite of mine, "A Charge to Keep I Have." I DIDN’T KNOW YODA WAS A METHODIST. SEEMED MORE LIKE A BAPTIST. OR MAYBE HE’S REFERRING TO THE RECORD DEFICIT; YOU KNOW, “CHARGE IT.”

I love the painting because it speaks to serving a cause that is greater than yourself. GEORGE, CLEANING THE LITTER BOX IS A CAUSE GREATER THAN YOU. The picture reminds me every day that my most important job is to unite our country and provide leadership to overcome America's toughest challenges.

We can show the world that America is a strong and compassionate nation in which every person is able to achieve his or her dream. MY DREAM INVOLVES YOU BEING CAUGHT PICKING UP UNDER-AGE HOOKERS. Thank you for allowing me to serve as your President. WAIT, ARE YOU SAYING I HAD A CHOICE ALL THIS TIME? May God Bless America. WHY, DID IT SNEEZE?

But your great-great grandchildren may be screwed

Astonishingly, the headlines of every newspaper say that the Israeli cabinet voted for the “road map,” when in fact nothing remotely of the sort happened. First, it was a plurality of the cabinet, with a bunch of abstentions, so not much of a commitment to begin with. Second, they attached 14 objections to it, taking apart all its key principles, including simultaneity. In essence, they voted that the Palestinians should do things, and they won’t have to, and they won’t even negotiate until the Palestinians give in on all the key points, including return of refugees, and if at any point it looks like they might have to do anything they don’t want to, there’s a vague provision about Israeli security, which the Bushies fell for. In no way did the Israelis accept Bush’s plan. Afghanistan was ten times closer to accepting Bush’s demands when he decided to bomb them. Iraq was twenty times closer to accepting Bush’s demands when he invaded it.

Since then, Sharon promised a cabinet member that there will be “unlimited” building of settlements in the occupied territories “for your children and grandchildren, and I hope even for your great-grandchildren".

Or the Terrorists Win: Bush is now back in the fund-raising business big time. He recently sent a letter to potential donors saying that they should contribute early so he can spend his time focused on the war on terror.

Speaking of terrorists, I said that Bush said that Al Qaida was “not a problem any more.” It seems that was a distortion of the real quote by Maureen Dowd, upholding the NYT’s recent record of massive incompetence and malfeasance. Speaking of which, the Post Monday ran some internal Times memos in which Judith Miller, who made some very questionable judgments during the war in deals with the Pentagon, takes credit for all the paper’s stories about Iraqi WMDs--and says that the stories were all given to her by Chalabi.

The general in charge of Guantanamo has suggested that it could have its own execution facilities.

Sharon wants to end the automatic Israeli citizenship of children of one Israeli and one Palestinian parent.

Here’s a Ha’aretz interview with the Palestinian PM with two names. So far I think he’s playing things very smart. We’ll see. There’s some weird little thing at the end about the Israelis spreading a rumor that he’s a Bahai.

Conditions the Israeli cabinet put on the “road map” include the complete cessation of violence, the dismantling of Hamas, no discussion of the settlements until final status talks, and acceptance before negotiations begin of no right of return for Palestinians and that Israel will control Palestine’s borders. Oh sorry, not the complete cessation of violence, only that by Palestinians. It specifically says “The road map will not state that Israel must halt violence, incitement against the Palestinians.” But other than that... (no, actually that’s not even all 14 reservations).

The Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to secret immigration hearings.

You may have read about the Indian woman who had her prospective in-laws arrested for trying to extort a huge dowry (any dowry is against Indian law). And the number of dowry-related killings of new wives in India has been growing rapidly, to 7,000 annually that they know about. Anyway, there is now a prison wing in New Delhi just for mothers-in-law jailed for dowry offences or breaking up families.

http://theonion.com/onion3920/infograph_3920.html

Weapons of Mass Destruction discovered.

Across the border, you’ll remember that the Pakistani state bordering Afghanistan gained an elected Islamic government around the time the Afghan war began. The Talibanization of the North West Frontier Province continues apace. They’re about to introduce a “Vice and Virtue Department” to beat up women on the streets and whatnot. Cinemas are being closed, buses have to stop during prayers (and no music may be played on buses), female students have to wear a veil, etfuckingcetera.

Follow-up: I mentioned that Bush ordered Europe to take GM foods or the little African kid gets it. And he can use WTO rules to sue Europe, too, those rules saying that food can’t be banned without clear scientific evidence of potential damage. Why there may not be such evidence is made clearer by the Cartagena Protocol, which needs signatures of 50 countries to go into effect and now has 48. Cartagena says no nation can be forced to take Frankenfoods unless exporters provide details about what the stuff actually is and what environmental risks there are. The US, needless to say, is not a signatory. So Bush’s position is that they should take these foods without even knowing what they are.

Filtered through David Lynch

Patrick Cockburn comments on Bush’s statement this week that nearly half of Al Qaida’s top operatives have been captured or killed: “That is a curious conception of a terrorist organisation. It carries the implication al-Qa'ida is organised along the lines of the Pentagon or IBM and when the remaining 50 per cent of its senior officials are dead or imprisoned terrorism will automatically cease. Terrorists certainly do need co-ordination and money, but above all they require fanatical recruits willing to get killed. After the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, there is no shortage of these across the Muslim world.”

I could have predicted this: SARS came from Chinese people eating animals they really shouldn’t have been eating. Cute animals.

The first attempt at elections in Iraq (in Umm Qasr) are so incompetently arranged that they have to be cancelled.

A cute comment about the Virginia anti-spam law: “The law also gives the state the right to seize the assets of these companies, which is how the governor explained all those boxes of Viagra that his secretary found in the filing cabinet.”

One casualty of the war on terror is location-shooting for a lot of Hollywood movies. Morocco is now a problem, affecting the next Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies and an atrocity I hadn’t heard about...Alexander the Great, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

Sadly unaffected, a movie starring Mickey Rourke as Ernest Hemingway.

And as long as we’re talking films, that documentary about my relatives is featured in this week’s Sunday NY Times arts section (“Dateline filtered through David Lynch”) and the Village Voice. My mother mentioned today a cousin she had lost contact with, and had last heard of through her aunt who has since died. I commented that she had lost her last source of family gossip--except for the Village Voice.

The US is keeping 3,000 Iraqi prisoners from being visited by the Red Cross, in violation of international law. Hooded, shackled.

As opposed to the Democratic Party, which exists but has no activity

Tommy Franks orders all members of the Baath party’s top ranks to identify themselves to the US military. He said “There must be no Baath Party activity, because the party no longer exists,” a sentence whose logic would make Mr. Spock grit his teeth and mutter under his breath.

The UN does it, officially dissolves a country, turning over its administration and resources to another country. It’s no longer a United Nations, it’s the Congress of Berlin (oh, look it up). I’m serious, a “UN” that doesn’t respect the sovereignty of nations does not deserve to exist. The resolution includes immunity from lawsuits involving oil. And no deadline for getting the hell out.

Bush accuses Europe of causing starvation in Africa by banning the US’s bioengineered crops from Europe--not from Africa, mind you, but from Europe. The US trade rep has expanded on this in the Wall Street Journal: “some famine-stricken African countries refused U.S. food aid because of fabricated fears -- stoked by irresponsible rhetoric -- about food safety.” So they’re not even allowed to discuss the safety of bio-crops either. Shut up and eat, Europe, there are children starving in Africa. He also proposes that Europe stop its $4b subsidy of agricultural exports, but refuses to discuss the US’s $4b subsidy of agricultural exports. In fact he wants to increase it--as with his AIDS initiative, somehow all money to help Africa winds up being spent in the US, given to agribusiness or pharmaceutical giants.

Bush also said “Our country has been attacked by treachery in our own cities -- and that treachery continues in places like Riyadh and Casablanca.” The word “treachery” is interesting, because by definition it involves betrayal, which is only possible for people who owe you loyalty.

In Aceh, the Indonesian military is carrying out massacres and mass internments and relocations. Journalists are being banned.

Bush’s tax cut is going through, and I think we all need to start referring to it as voodoo economics. Even the Bushies are unable to massage the figures enough to support their claim that this has anything to do with creating jobs. Their most optimistic numbers for job creation have them giving away $500,000 per job.

Later: Marc Cooper in the LA Weekly refers to the tax cut as trickle-on-you economics. That works too.

The Pentagon’s $400 billion budget is larger in real terms than it was during the Cold War. And it seems to have lost $1 trillion. Perhaps it’s behind the couch. Missing items include 56 airplanes, 32 tanks, and 36 missile launchers. The budget includes new fighters and bombers, although the one thing Iraq, Afghanistan and Al Qaida had in common was no usable air force. The new F-22 fighter-bomber cost $257 million. That’s each.

The Justice Department has detailed its use of the Patriot Act, including the number of secret detentions, including people held as material witnesses who were never actually called upon to witness to anything. It won’t surprise you to hear that the government is using its shiny new powers for many purposes that have nothing to do with terrorism.

Speaking of terrorism, Texas passed a law requiring doctors to try to terrorize women seeking abortions, including showing them color pictures of fetuses (D’s tried to get rape and incest victims exempted from this, but no go) and telling them that abortion leads to breast cancer, which is not true (Miss. and Minn. also require that this lie be purveyed). Also a waiting period, which is especially obnoxious in a state that is as big as Texans like to brag it is, and in which abortion is only available in 15 out of 254 counties.


Zagreb: For Frane Selak, a music teacher from Petrinja in Central Croatia, defying death is nothing new. He recently survived when the bus he was on plunged into a river in Bosnia, killing everyone on board except him and the driver.

In 1962 he was on a train that plunged into another Bosnian river, killing dozens. The year before, a small aircraft crashed in Croatia, killing 17 passengers and three crew members. Mr Selak was on board when the aircraft took off — but not when it crashed.

“The plane’s rear doors opened and I was sucked out of the plane,” he said. He awoke three days later in hospital, to be told that rescuers had found him unconscious in a haystack. (AFP)

The Group of the Martyr Ebenezer Scrooge

Remember Steve Hatfill? He’s the guy very possibly behind the anthrax mailings. He decided to take a photo of the FBI agent who was following him around, whereupon the agent drove off, in an SUV--natch--running over his foot. Hatfill got a $5 jaywalking ticket. No word on whether the Fibbie got picked up for hit & run.

RNC chair Marc Racicot, recently caught committing the Republican crime of meeting with gay groups, albeit secretly, has been coerced into meeting as well with a group of “ex-gays.”

Milosevic’s war crimes prosecutors are granted an extra 100 days of court time to make their case. Milosevic will have two years to put on his defense. No matter what the ultimate verdict is, this is a good start.

Speaking of war crimes, an Iraqi general who was arrested by Denmark for that and who escaped from house arrest is back in Iraq, with CIA backing. Did the CIA actually help a war criminal escape from Denmark?

Here’s a nice start to a story: “A senior civil servant leading a campaign to ban pornography from French television has denied sworn witness statements that he once took part in sado-masochistic soirees run by a convicted serial killer.”

A meeting of icons today, Nelson Mandela and David Beckham, who seems to be wearing Bo Derrick’s old hairstyle.

The Total Information Awareness program will be renamed Terrorist Information Awareness, which should eliminate any possible doubts that it would misuse information. For example, millions will be spent developing a database of people’s walks so that they can be identified from quite a long way away. No columnist has been able to mention this without referring to Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks. There is no reason to think this even works.

Speaking of counter-terrorism, in 1974 a fake “Group of the Martyr Ebenezer Scrooge” issued a threat of some sort against Santa Claus. The CIA investigated and kept the results classified for 29 years.

Still speaking of counter-terrorism, Tom Ridge is refusing to release the transcripts of the call from the Texas fuzz that brought them into the search for the missing legislators. The cops have already ordered all records of the incident destroyed. Homeland Security will be investigating itself, but its inspector general, one Clark Kent Ervin has had to recuse himself, because when he removes his glasses, he is revealed as a highly partisan appointment from Texas.

Cow urine, unexpected opportunities, the Barney song, fish in a blender

Earlier this year (I forget if I mentioned it), during state elections in India the Congress Party accused the prime minister of secretly eating hamburgers. Well, cow politics are heating up (the Telegraph says brought to a boil, which is a waste of good beef) in India, with accusations going back and forth over who likes cows best. The chief minister of Madhya Pradesh says--nay, brags--that he drinks cow urine regularly. I think that’s actually more gross than the prime minister in the ‘70s who drank his own urine.

AP story: “Poll: New Jerseyans Love Their State.” There’s no accounting for taste.

Giving the commencement address at the U of Missouri, Dick Cheney told grads to look for “the unexpected opportunities” in life. My brain has just been overloaded by the sheer number of sarcastic comments I could make about that, and I will have to reboot.

Speaking of unexpected opportunities, the guy Bush put in charge of Iraq’s oil industry 1) suggested that Iraq should break OPEC quotas, 2) is paid $1m a year by Fluor, a company bidding for oil reconstruction work in Iraq, and owns $34m of its stock.

Buh bye to Ari Fleischer. There’s a good piece in Salon about what a lying sack of shit he’s been.

In Britain, at least, natural childbirth is now in the minority, 45%, the rest involving induction, Caesarean or forceps, anaethesia and such.

Musical news from Iraq: Newsweek says that US interrogators are using heavy metal and the Barney song to torture Iraqis into talking. And Saddam’s praise singer, who sang songs on tv about how great Saddam was, has been assassinated.

Seen from ten feet away

Multnomah, Ore. planned to hire a part-time translator to communicate with those mental health patients who will only speak in Klingon. Media attention made them call off the job-search.

I was going to use the Net to add a comment on that in Klingon, but honestly, that just feels like way too much work, so let’s all just pretend I wrote something sarcastic but witty in Klingon.

A Brown professor says that the Saudi bombings were not Al Qaeda, but regular old anti-House of Saud types who want American mercenaries out of the country, as I said a couple of days ago. “Washington no longer seems able to entertain the thought that there might be revolutionary groups that have entirely local reasons for their actions. This tragic attack might well have taken place if the United States had not had a presence in Saudi Arabia. However, the existence of a quasi-military command force in the form of the Vinnell Corp. virtually guaranteed that Americans would be caught in the cross fire of what was arguably a local revolutionary action.”

I reported that the Rs’ insistence on holding their 2004 Convention in September meant they’d be choosing a nominee past the ballot deadlines in several states, including Calif. Well, the Democratic CA. secretary of state has decided to help them out and will sponsor a bill to change the deadline, saying he wouldn’t politicize his office, unlike some secretaries of state of southern states he could name. DNC chair Terry McAuliffe criticizes the decision.

France goes public with claims that the White House fed false rumors about it helping Iraq to the press. It will come as no surprise to my readers that The Bushies lie all the time, and that their specialty is little leaked stories that they know won’t stand up to scrutiny, but won’t get much scrutiny, and the correction won’t get much publicity, and the intended impression will remain in most people’s minds in a sort of vague way, without details. What France is complaining of is exactly what worked so well in convincing the American people that Saddam had something, they’re not sure quite what, to do with 9/11, but they use this technique for everything. I’m paying more attention than most and it didn’t occur to me to compare Bush’s most recent tax proposals to the promises about not touching the Social Security surplus in the 2000 election campaign (see the dailyhowler.com). Raymond Chandler had a great line, describing a woman: “From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away.” Bush’s tax policy, like his foreign policy, is designed to be seen from 30 feet away.

Exploding pacemakers

I just made the sort of mistake only a sleep-deprived historian could. In the world in brief section of the NY Times I saw the headline “Belgium: War Crimes Complaint Against Franks,” and my first thought was that the statute of limitations should have run out for the Franks about 1,400 years ago. Turned out they meant Gen. Tommy Franks. Well that makes more sense. Now the Visigoths...

An interesting leak in the NYT (will anybody be horribly befuddled if I just use that abbreviation in the future?), which was told by FBI sources that they had nothing to do with the expulsion of Cuban diplomats for spying, in other words they may have been spies, but did nothing in particular recently to justify the measure, which was ordered for political reasons by the White House. This sort of childish message-sending is bad enough for normal diplomats, but 7 of them were in Cuba’s UN delegation, and the UN host country should not be screwing around with that without a very much better reason than they had. It’s not just showing contempt for Cuba, but contempt for the UN.

The House Armed Services Committee rejected the Bush proposal to allow development of baby nukes (the Senate committee went the other way). How ‘bout that?

For those who of you who like the Opera web-browser but are annoyed by the flashing banner ads, they have disappeared in the last few weeks. My guess is that they run ads on the newer versions of the program, but have stopped for the older ones.

So Texas state cops enlisted Homeland Security in the search for the missing D’s by claiming to have believed their plane had crashed. Naturally, Tom Ridge’s boys in yellow failed to detect the false alert.

Paul Wolfowitz told Turkish tv that the Bush admin was disappointed that the Turkish military hadn’t overruled the civilian government to assist the US in Iraq.

From the Danish Post, via Funny Old World in Private Eye:

“Every time this happens, it’s a disaster,” Claes Foghmoes of the Danish Crematorium Owners Association (DCMA) told reporters in Copenhagen, “and the explosions are happening more and more often these days. Whenever there’s a blast, it disables the entire mechanism, and we have to let the oven cool for two to three days, before we can go inside to change the parts. And as a result, we’re often left with a backlog of bodies, which have to be rerouted to other crematoriums.”

Earlier, Dr Niels Bloch of the Medical Officers Association had described how explosions were disabling or destroying crematoriums throughout Denmark, because doctors forget to remove pacemakers from deceased patients. “It’s my impression that these accidents aren’t due so much to forgetfulness, but to the fact that the doctor who signs the death certificate often isn’t aware that the deceased has a pacemaker to begin with. Lithium batteries are commonly used in pacemakers, and they explode like TNT when exposed to extremely high temperatures. This sort of explosion is so powerful that the crematory oven brickwork, heat sensors, and cover can all be irreparably damaged, and the DCMA then sends damage bills of up to DKK 100,00 to liable hospitals and doctors.

“What we need is legislation that makes it a matter of standard procedure for patients to have the word ‘pacemaker’ tattooed to their chests when they are fitted with one. How can doctors know otherwise, except by asking them? And of course, when the patient is dead, that line of enquiry becomes rather tricky.”

Thank God we didn't have those Democrats at the Alamo

The US has started a tv station in Iraq, but indefinitely postponed it having a news program, after the “administration” tried to have it pre-censored by the wife of a Kurdish leader sponsored by the US.

The military denies a NY Times report that it had given new orders to shoot looters. OK, only the Times knows the source that leaked it the original story, but simple logic can tell us what happened here. First, they were never going to implement such a policy, because it would look bad, because some of the looters are taking food because they are starving, which is our fault, and because how would the Iraqis hear of the policy change. That tv station interviewed the head of the electricity dept and I imagine the first question was, why are we bothering interview you when no one has electricity to run their tv’s. So what they must have done was leak the false story of a shoot-to-kill policy in order to frighten the Iraqis. All the reign-of-fear benefits of an actual shoot-to-kill policy without the opprobrium, and it’s all deniable. Governance by rumor.

Another suicide bombing in Chechnya, sadly narrowly failing to kill the head of Moscow’s puppet government. Putin is trying to claim that this is linked to the bombings in Saudi. About the only link is that last week he said the war in Chechnya had been won and last week Bush said that Al Qaeda is “not a problem any more.” Bombs don’t kill people, smug pronouncements of victory kill people.

Or maybe paper cuts do. Condoleeza Rice said last week that the US is hoping to find incriminating documents in Iraq rather than the actual WMDs. The British however, are saying that the discovery of mass graves justifies the war, retrospectively, and we should all ignore the rationales they gave at the time.

US Rep. Sam Johnson (R-some bit of the US stolen from Mexico) accused the Texas legislators-in-exile of being deserters. "Thank God we didn't have those Democrats at the Alamo." Yeah, because then it might not have gone so well. The D’s are probably regretting their choice of Oklahoma, having spent part of today in a basement after a tornado warning (there was no tornado). Somebody (not clear who) asked the Department of Homeland Security to trace an airplane one of the legislators owns. The Guardian warns “Hunting renegade politicians across the prairie has bipartisan appeal for an electorate with a generally low opinion of its representatives and a fierce attachment to guns and field sports. This idea could catch on, especially after the Clinton ban on Uzis and AK-47s expires next year.” And Molly Ivins...well, click here.

After the “rescue” of Priv. Jessica Lynch, the Pentagon released a very edited film of the operation. It now seems that the Iraqi soldiers had pulled out of the hospital days before--and the Pentagon absolutely refuses to release the unedited footage.

In my last, I mentioned Jeb Bush trying to appoint a guardian for a fetus. A detail: when a reporter used the word “fetus,” the Jebster interrupted and insisted on the word “baby.”

The meaning of American justice

California may be closing all its schools, but there’s still money in the budget for grief therapy for farmers whose chickens were killed to prevent the spread of Newcastle Disease.

Why is it a “Bushism” that Shrub called New Mexico “The Land of the Enchanted”? Doesn’t that describe anyone from Santa Fe you’ve ever met?

An Israeli paper had this headline, "Sharon to Powell: Do you want settler women to have abortions?" I have no idea what Powell’s reply could possibly have been, although he could have asked if Sharon wanted Palestinian women to have abortions, since Sharon is planning to seize this Lebensraum from a population with a higher birth rate. By the way, a study says that Israelis get more than 50% more water than Palestinians, so at least the settlers can have a nice relaxing bath after their abortions.

Speaking of which, Jeb Bush illegally orders the state to appoint a guardian for the fetus of a severely mentally disabled woman impregnated in the facility she has lived in her entire life. In other words he wants to use this rape victim, too handicapped to be able to speak, as an incubator.

There are 15,000 princes in Saudi Arabia.

A new biography of JFK says that he too fucked an intern, 19 years old. Named Mimi.

Iraqi schoolchildren are being told to rip out anything in their textbooks with the name or picture of Saddam Hussein, by order of the Ministry of Education. This was the job Winston Smith held in “1984,” of course. Saddam is now an “un-person.”

The bombings in Saudi Arabia hit an American company Vinnell, which is a CIA front that recruits mercenaries. Its people, the Times says, were seen fighting alongside Saudi troops in the 1991 Gulf War, which leads to the question--Saudi troops actually did some of their own fighting in the 1991 Gulf War? They also tried to overthrow the Bishop government in Grenada in the early 1980s, were involved in Iran-Contra, and have a “No Jews” clause in their Saudi contracts. They used to be owned by the Carlyle Group, which I have mentioned before. I guess I can’t be on the same side as the terrorists, but gosh it’s tempting sometimes, isn’t it?

Bush says that the terrorists will learn the meaning of American justice. Speaking of which, I heard a rumor that O J Simpson will do tv commentary on the Robert Blake trial. (Hah, I’ve been holding on to that one for a week waiting for the exact right moment to use it!)

The world’s first inflatable church---and it’s Gothic.

Protests by Iraqis have forced the resignation of Baathists the US tried to impose on them as head of the ministry of health, police chief and deputy police chief.

One of the Texas state legislators has been arrested. There is also an 800 number to report on their location, and the cops are conducting surveillance on the missing legislators’ families. The D’s are in Oklahoma, not New Mexico as I reported yesterday. They gave a press conference today and are accusing Tom DeLay of messing with Texas, which I recall from Bush’s campaign is considered a hangin’ offence in these here parts.

The 1994 ban on Uzis and other semiautos will be allowed to expire, so plan your gift-buying accordingly.

Dr. Germ versus the Card Deck of Justice

Here’s a report that tries to discover exactly what Bush knew and when he knew it on 9/11/01. Evidently, there are many contradictory details and 7 different versions--several told by Bush himself--including whether Bush was told about the hijackings before or after he started reading to the kiddies, and who told him. If we believe what the White House has said, Bush heard about the World Trade Center a full 10 minutes after CNN reported it. This article suggests that Bush was told, before the event at the school, but simply didn’t grasp what had happened, and the White House then had to cover this up, putting out the story that he was informed while reading to the kids about goats. I said at the time that it was criminally negligent of Bush, once he knew that more than one airplane had been hijacked, not to break off the event immediately, because the president was (then) the only person authorized to order civilian aircraft over the US to be shot down, and he should have been finding out what was going on in case he had to make such an order, but he chose the photo op over intel. Something I missed: on several occasions Bush himself has said that he saw the footage of the plane hitting the WTC on a tv before he went into the school--except no such footage was available until the next day. The article is long and incredibly detailed, but it asks a lot of interesting questions about what precisely was going on that day. A must-read.

With all these movies based on Marvel comics coming out, do you think it’s a coincidence that the US media have given recently arrested Iraqis nicknames like “Dr. Germ”? Note that the good doctor was not captured but surrendered, as have most of the Deck of Card (TM).

Bush judicial nominee Charles Pickering has lied about his racist past in Mississippi.

I have no idea what’s going on in Iraq, except that Jay Garner seems to have been deposed in a much less bloody regime change than the last one. Barbara Bodine, who was supposed to be running the Baghdad region, is also sent home. She was asked some time back by the press about the incident in Fallajuh (which was within her jurisdiction) in which US soldiers killed 13 (or so) protesters, but she hadn’t even heard about it. The new crop of proconsuls are avoiding such embarrassment by not talking to the press at all, including Margaret Tutweiler, who is in charge of communications--communications with whom is not entirely clear.

Two months ago, Putin said that his fake elections in Chechnya made the rebels irrelevant. Today they blow up 40 people. Hopefully a lot of them were KGB. Putin says this was intended to disrupt the “normalization process” in Chechnya. Good. As a bumper sticker I saw in Berkeley said, “Normal people worry me.” Normalization in Chechnya especially worries me.

Israel promises Colin Powell to ease restrictions on Palestinian movement. And then promptly seals off Gaza again.

Almost all the Democratic Texas state legislators are hiding in Oklahoma to prevent a quorum. The remaining legislators have been locked in, and troopers were sent to arrest legislators, but there aren’t enough to conduct business (which is the redistricting I mentioned a few days ago). I predict a rip-snorting Molly Ivins column. Until then, this from the WashPost:

Today, New Mexico Attorney General Patricia Madrid said lawyers for Perry asked her if Texas Rangers might be allowed to make arrests in New Mexico. Madrid, a Democrat, said no. "Nonetheless," she added in a statement, "I have put out an all-points bulletin for law enforcement to be on the lookout for politicians in favor of health care for the needy and against tax cuts for the wealthy."

Indonesia restarts the war in Acheh.

We're sexy, we're cute, we're radical to boot!

Fear, it will not surprise you to hear, is big business. Terrorist-related fear, really big business. Here’s a story about Bush advisor and former incompetent CIA head James Woolsey, who is a director of an equity firm set up after 9/11 to make money off the $60 billion they expect the government to spend. Woolsey also spends his time lying for the administration, blaming the anthrax scare on Iraq, claiming there’s a link between Al Qaida and Iraq, etc etc. He played up the need for new equipment to protect against biological weapons, while his firm invested in that very technology.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that Bucharest’s children’s hospital had stopped providing dialysis but had hired armed guards to keep out journalists there to report on the dying kids. Well, the response to the article in the Daily Telegraph was £15,000 in British donations which the hospital, naturally, refused. A week later they changed their minds.

Those of us who receive emails purporting to be from the relatives of its former leaders know that the civil wars in Congo-Kinshasa were highly profitable, especially for us if we provide those relatives with our bank account numbers (and profitable for all sides--Kevin and Chris have heard from Mobutu’s heirs, I from Kabila’s). Still, they produced a lot of orphans, as has AIDS. And when their relatives don’t feel like taking them in, evidently they accuse them of being witches and throw them out, almost 30,000 of them on the streets of Kinshasa, according to Save the Witches, I mean Save the Children. The fact of their parents dying of AIDS is of course proof that a spell was cast. Or, when their relatives don’t feed them, their emaciation is a sign of witchcraft. And I haven’t even talked about the exorcisms. Read the article here and keep away from knives and gas ovens for the next hour.

Evidently anti-war rallies now have their own cheerleaders. “We're sexy, we're cute, we're radical to boot!” I just looked up “radical cheerleaders” on Google, and evidently it’s a phenomenon.

The US (and Britain) have gone to the UN to be recognized as the legal rulers (“authority”) of Iraq. I can’t remember when the UN was last asked to give trusteeships over whole peoples. Can it even do that, abrogate the sovereignty of a nation? The US used to report (reluctantly) to the UN Trusteeship Council about the Philippines, but the Council dealt with existing colonies, it didn’t sanction the creation of new ones. I am suggesting here that this would be an important and dangerous innovation in international law. Hopefully, someone will veto it; much better if Bush does what he’s going to do anyway in violation of international law. An occupation regime represents force and force alone. Sometimes force and occupation may even be necessary, but let’s not kid ourselves about this being about anything more than who had the most expensive weaponry.

So what’s with the ritual humiliation of forcing Iraqis who want jobs and were members of the Baath Party to denounce both it and Saddam Hussein, and everyone else to declare that they are not now, nor have they ever been, members of the Baath Party? I’m not making up that wording--“denounce” or the McCarthyite stuff. Maybe we can teach them the Pledge of Allegiance. This is not the way to make people free, it is the way to make them keep their heads down, just like they did under Saddam, who also made them sign pledges.

Speaking of dangerous innovations, Congress is moving ahead with granting the Bushies the power to test baby nukes (5 kilotons, or 1/3 of a Hiroshima). Such devices could be used as bunker-busters or to incinerate bio/chem weapons sites, or possibly just because they’d look cool, like Bush landing on an aircraft carrier, and are therefore designed to be used, not to threaten with, eroding the line between conventional weapons and those which should never be used, making the case against nuclear proliferation that much harder for the US to make and, therefore the world an increasingly dangerous place as nukes spread to more and more nations, proliferating like the sub-clauses in this very sentence--stop the madness!

Berlusconi added, and I have a mistress, but in two years...

As you know, the US has been trying to get countries to agree not to surrender US nationals to the International Court. In recent weeks, pressure and threats have been brought to bear on Caribbean nations, which I assume was necessary to ensure that Henry Kissinger has somewhere nice to vacation. This week, Sierra Leone gave the US the impunity agreement it wanted, and vice versa, which is especially significant since SL just had a civil war with the requisite crimes against humanity etc.

The Bushies may invoke executive privilege to keep documents away from the 9/11 commission.

A Baltimore Sun piece on a recent requirement that every other state adopt the centralized voter registry that worked so well in Florida, making ethnic purging of “criminals” easier. Did you know that voter registries in the South have the race of voters next to their name?

The world’s stupidest looters: the ones who took drums labeled “radioactive” from Iraqi nuclear research facilities, poured out that glowing yellow stuff and used them for storage.

Bush proposes a US-Middle East free trade zone, an idea which will never be heard of again. The idea, of course, is to coerce Arab states into dropping their boycott of Israel (an element of the plan the NY Times fails to mention).

The US releases some Guantanamo prisoners, saying they “no longer posed a threat to US security,” whatever that means, possibly that they hit puberty and are now more interested in girls. Actually, the US won’t even say whether it has released the under-16 crowd. Incidentally, they just moved yet more prisoners there from Afghanistan, more than they released.

Here’s a good headline for an op-ed piece in The Times that I didn’t actually feel the need to read: “The Vatican Should Settle for Being a Temple to Bad Taste and Stop Trying to Become the Official Church of the EU.”

James Kopp, who murdered an abortion doctor, is sentenced to 25 years to life. In this case, I find that I am actually pro-life.

PM Berlusconi told the NY Times that he is not having any fun. “‘I have a sailboat, but in two years, I’ve only been on it one day,’ he said, speaking in Italian and striking a stoic tone.” I think that last bit is sarcasm.

The Swiss are the lovers

Berlusconi is planning to freeze his trial by getting a law passed for immunity from prosecution for MPs (they floated a plan limited to cabinet ministers and their deputies, but the MPs who will have to vote on it wanted to be above the law too).

I mentioned that Poland will be given a zone in Iraq. Any German troops may be put under Polish command. Heh heh.

Low-income students are suing the state of California for equality in textbooks, teachers, classrooms, etc etc in public schools. They note that Gray Davis has set minimum standards for student progress, but no standards for school quality. Fighting this, Davis is arguing (and I’m gonna quote from the Chron because you wouldn’t believe that I wasn’t exaggerating) “that low-income students are unlikely to do any better in school even with the same educational benefits as middle-class students.” One of his experts, Caroline Hoxby, who’s at Harvard and so must be smart, or at least arrogant, says that the influence of parents and the neighborhood is much more important than that of the schools, so that if you give too much money to the schools, it reduces the influence of the parents and neighborhood relative to the schools. So far, Davis has spent $18 million fighting the suit, which reduces the influence of the schools relative to over-priced lawyers and Harvard economists. One expert on the other side quoted in the article was Kevin’s dissertation chair, who may not be smart enough to work at Harvard but owns bassets and so must be trustworthy and not embarrassed to be seen in public with a silly-looking animal (Kevin, not the basset).

And Republicans are trying to recall Davis because he’s too liberal.

Here’s a frightening WashPost headline: “1,500 Spanish Troops To Aid Iraq Recovery.” Yes, soon Iraq will be up to Spanish levels of efficiency. And will have the level of security that only the Polish army can provide. Iraq is getting to be like that joke about heaven and hell. Wait, here it is from the internet:

In heaven:
The English are the police,
The Germans are the mechanics,
The Swiss are the administrators,
The French are the lovers,
The Italians are the cooks.

In hell:
The English are the cooks,
The French are the mechanics,
The Swiss are the lovers,
The Italians are the administrators,
The Germans are the police!

I found that by searching Google for “the swiss are the lovers.” Sadly--at least it’s sad for the Swiss--the only hits were for that joke.

In recompense for the Spanish troops, the Bush admin has put a couple more Basque organizations on the terrorist list. Not that a list of officially designated terrorist organizations would be composed on the basis of political horse-trading, oh no.

The WashPost finally reports that Bush delayed the homecoming of the carrier Abe Lincoln by a day (you heard it here 5 days ago). D’s figure it cost $800,000 to $1m. Bush responds only that it was an honor to be there. An honor is something that is bestowed upon one. This is something he ordered as commander in chief: it’s no more an honor than sending flowers to yourself on your own birthday is. Ari Fleischer says criticizing the stunt is a disservice to the men and women of the military. He doesn’t say how.

I hadn’t realized that Iran gave the US overflight rights during the Afghan war--and revoked them within hours of Bush making the “axis of evil” speech. The speech also of course led N Korea to decide that the US had declared war on it, although it was added to the axis pretty much just so that it wouldn’t be all-Muslim. To date, “axis of evil” is the only memorable piece of rhetoric out of Shrub’s mouth, and it’s been way more trouble than it’s worth. He should have learned from his father, who has said 3 memorable things in his entire life. “A thousand points of light,” which is fairly unobjectionable, if vacuous; “voodoo economics” and “Read my lips, no new taxes,” which were deeply embarrassing when he had to take them back.

Notes towards Shakespeare, by six George W. Bush lookalikes

The EU is planning to require that industrial chemicals sold in Europe actually be tested for safety first. The US is complaining that this is unfair. Or, to put it another way, no such tests occur in the US, except for pesticides. Something else to worry about.

Some Dem. Senator in McNeil-Lehrer today was complaining that the Republican approach to rules is goal-oriented, i.e., if they’re losing the game, they make up new rules. That was about confirmation of judges. But here’s a new one: re-drawing the lines of Congressional districts. Silly me, I thought this could only be done every 10 years, after a census, but evidently it can be done for partisan advantage any time someone feels like it, as in Colorado and maybe, on a larger scale, Texas.

At Bush’s press conference with Prime Minister Aznar of Spain, he twice referred to him as president--again. Although at least this time he got his name right.

So will a bunch of monkeys in front of typewriters produce Shakespeare? No, but they will shit on the keyboard (as who hasn’t, at one time or another?). Someone has tried the experiment and you can buy a book (Notes Towards the Complete Works of Shakespeare) of their actual literary production, sans monkey poop.

The US occupation authority is thinking about censoring Iraqi tv. I hope my digestive problems the last couple of weeks don’t come from ingesting too much irony, since some days I pretty much live on the stuff.

Foreigners entering the Gaza (including UN aid workers) must now sign a waiver absolving the Israeli army if it shoots them. And they must declare that they are not peace activists. The autopsy on a British cameraman proves that he was shot by the Israelis, and not by Palestinians as the army tried to claim. Also, when the family of a British peace activist shot deliberately through the head when he was trying to protect a small child (and still in a coma 3+ weeks later) went to the site in the company of the British consul, they were shot at, despite having given notice of their plan and route three times.

Rome is going to test and license those guys who sit on sidewalks and sell crappy paintings to tourists, to see if they can actually paint. Evidently most of those things are actually made in China, and the “artist” sits around pretending to touch it up.

Richard Perle received a classified briefing from the Defence Intelligence Agency on Iraq and Korea, and two weeks later gave a talk to Goldman Sachs investors entitled “Iraq Now. North Korea Next?”

When is a child not a child?

A couple of stories in the Guardian on ChoicePoint, a story still ignored by American papers. A quote: Literature that ChoicePoint produced to advertise its services to the department of justice promised, in the case of Colombia, a "national registry file of all adult Colombians, including date and place of birth, gender, parentage, physical description, marital status, passport number, and registered profession". It is illegal under Colombian law for government agencies to disclose such information, except in response to a request for data on a named individual.

Also, while the company is busy denying it illegally acquired Mexican electoral registration information, its own advertising says it can offer "nationwide listing of all Mexican citizens registered to vote as of the 2000 general election - updated annually".

The US gov will also be trying to get credit card information on any foreigner entering the country.

Speaking of privacy, the State Dept’s annual report on international terrorism contains harsh criticism of Canada. Evidently it doesn’t have enough police and its citizens have too many privacy rights, inhibiting its ability to deliver up information on Canadians when the US demands it.

I saw only the excerpts from the first Democratic debate, which was more than enough. It was held in the all-important state of South Carolina, whose 3 registered Democrats are pivotal, as we know. Polled later, all 3 said that it was the first time they’d seen a Jew up close. Joe the Jew chided the other candidates for not being Republican enough. Kerry is running on his record as the only candidate to fight in the Vietnam War, which I suspect doesn’t even impress Vietnam vets all that much, much less anyone else. And if Kerry can be made that peevish by the incomparably bland Howard Dean, how on earth does he expect to be able to deal with Jacques Chirac or Kim Jong Il?

The incredibly corrupt prime minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, testified today at his own bribery trial, trying to implicate as many other people as possible (including former PMs Craxi and Prodi), claiming the judges are “reds,” and saying that he won’t resign even if he’s convicted. He has systematically destroyed the Italian justice system and taken over the nation’s media. And the Italian people don’t care. A good report.

The Pentagon is to release the child prisoners held at Guantanamo, or possibly just transfer them to jails in their own countries. Amazing what a little publicity can do. Rummy defended the detentions, saying the 13 to 15-year olds were dangerous and were “not children.”

Sooner or later US killers we'll kiss you

The Daily Show describes Joe Lieberman as the candidate for people who want to vote for Bush but think he’s not Jewish enough.

Still, in the First Wife category, Kerry’s wife, the ketchup widow Teresa Heinz (now renamed by his staffers Teresa Heinz Kerry, in a process known as de-Rodhamization; they also forced her to change her voter registration from Republican), seems a winner. In an interview with Elle (which I can’t find at their site), she says that the best diet for children is rabbit meat, that Hillary should have shot Bill, and something about plastic surgery being essential.

Today they’re saying that Saddam Hussein “stole” $1 billion from the central bank. Leaving aside the question of whether that really constitutes theft, since he was, you know, dictator, I have to doubt that there was really that much just lying around in cash.

The Supreme Court overturned a ruling by the Texas Court of Appeals as to whether a confession was obtained following an illegal arrest. The Texas court said that there was no arrest, just because the 17-year old was woken up in the middle of the night and hauled off in his underwear; after all, a “reasonable person...would not believe that being put in handcuffs was a significant restriction on his freedom of movement”, and he showed his consent by not resisting the non-arrest or the use of handcuffs.

The (London) Evening Standard cut and pasted in order to make a front-page photo of the crowd at the statue-toppling in Baghdad look like there were more people than were actually there.

Also from the Memory Hole, the change in widely-disseminated news reports of a sign held by Iraqi protesters from “Sooner or later US killers we'll kick you out” to “...we’ll kill you.”

Also, the LA Times changed the online archived version of a story about the US plane that fired on British tanks, to remove everything that made the US look bad.

FAIR says that a Nexis search shows that the evening news programs on the 3 networks have not used the term “depleted uranium” once since the beginning of the year.

There will be a Polish Zone in Iraq. Oh, if I only did those sort of jokes.

Seymour Hersh’s latest, on how crappy the Bush admin’s intel on Iraq actually was, and how it was manipulated by Chalabi’s people and those in the Pentagon who only wanted to hear what they wanted to hear.

Henry Waxman has demanded an accounting of the cost for Bush’s campaign ad on the USS Abraham Lincoln, as Bush staff are forced to admit he could simply have taken a helicopter.

Here’s a story you don’t see every day: “Emmanuel Gumbi, 31, ran into a South African supermarket butcher’s department, seized a butcher’s saw and started to cut off his own head.” That’s an electric saw. He got halfway through. Which was enough.

Green chili cheese grits

A week on, a report on the Americans’ lies about the massacre of Fallujah and failure to do a proper investigation. It also lists the state of play on investigations of other incidents, friendly fire, killing of journalists, that guy who confessed to murder to the Las Vegas newspaper.

Tony Blair, whose exact religious status is a little ambiguous (i.e., he’s been flirting with Catholicism for years) says that his actions in Iraq will be judged by “my Maker.” By British standards, this is effusively religious and is not the sort of thing one does in public. Former MP Matthew Parris says of Blair, “He has an unhinged belief, firstly in the purity of his own intention, secondly in the fact that his own good intentions can only lead to good results, and thirdly that he's going to win people over, that he's going to persuade people.” Which is a good description of Shrub.

The Mozarteum University in Salzburg, which once graduated Herbert van Karajan, is introducing a course in yodeling. Yodeling is becoming very popular, the Sunday Telegraph article says, including in Japan and China. Japanese people yodeling. The 4-year course will also include the zither and “the sort of dances that require the wearing of lederhosen and involve much knee-slapping.”

Speaking of cultural horrors, Bush had the Australian PM out to the ranch and fed him one of Bush’s favorite meals: green chili cheese grits.

Evidently today is the 25th anniversary of spam.

Today, Bush went out of his way to say that Tariq Aziz is giving us no useful information. Which obviously means that he is. Honestly, how stupid do they think we are?

No, don’t answer that.

The Big Shrug

From the Guardian: Later, veteran Labour MP Tam Dalyell tabled a Commons question to the prime minister asking to which Iraqis he was referring when he claimed in Warsaw that he had spoken to local people during his visit to Iraq on the subject of welcoming the American-British military action. Mr Dalyell, MP for Linlithgow and father of the Commons, commented: "From the public prints and the BBC, I understand that the only Iraqis to whom he spoke were schoolchildren."

The same story says Blair gave an “angry but opaque” denial of accusations that MI6 was told to “sex up” the dossier of accusations against Iraq. (In another bit of good writing, Polly Toynbee says that with Blair there is always a wavy line between deception and self-deception. “There is an almost childish blurring between the wish and the fact: if he says something strongly enough, his words can magic it into truth.” Sound like anyone else you know?)

Matthew Parris in The Times says that Blair’s (and by extension Bush’s) new communications tool about such things as the Big Shrug, a term I intend to use frequently. He doesn’t think it’ll work in Britain, and is surprised that the country turned out not to be so amnesiac as to have forgotten the reason given for going to war. The US, of course, is populated almost entirely by amnesiacs.

They’ve also been sexing up the March report of the UN inspectors, as proof that Iraq had WMDs. Hans Blix denies that they ever said anything of the sort.

If anyone out there cares about the Congo, they might want to read this . Here’s it’s opening sentence: “From her hiding place in the woods outside the Congolese town of Bunia, Ruta Bonabingi watched as militiamen roasted and then ate the severed arms of her dying daughters.” The paper notes that this is the deadliest war since 1945. Let’s give some credit to the French for being willing to send peacekeeping troops into the heart of darkness.

Some Burmese are suing Unocal in American courts, for the forced labor, murder, torture, rape, etc etc used by the Burmese military to provide security and free labor for the building of Unocal’s pipeline. John Ashcroft wants to eliminate the ability of foreigners to pursue such suits in US courts.

The Texas thing goes on. A restraining order was issued barring the fuzz shredding any more paperwork related to its hunt for the missing D’s, no doubt too late. A Dem. state rep on the Law Enforcement Committee, seeking to interview 4 cops, was told by the attorney general that he must first tell them who leaked that they were destroying documents.

A British soldier is being questioned for the torture of an Iraqi POW (also something about soldiers performing sex acts near POWs, details unclear at present). How do we know this? Because he took pictures. And had them developed in a shop in Britain. Which called the cops.

What is Bush’s thing with eyes? There was his comment about looking into Putin’s eyes and understanding his soul, or something, and now he says he’s going to the Middle East because “I want [Middle East leaders] to look me in the eye so they can see that I am determined to work to make this happen.” Is it the left eye or the right eye that’s the determined one? To me, they both look vacant.

Reality tv at its finest, in Britain, where the parties are competing to see who can be nastiest about and to seekers of political asylum. Viewers will be invited to vote on particular cases.

There was a major earthquake in Japan. The deputy governor of the affected region has been fired because after hearing the news, he carried on playing a pinball gambling game for 45 minutes. Actually, if it’s the game I think it is, it’s very popular in Japan and takes in huge amounts of money, which go to North Korea.

Pork--the other white blasphemy against Allah

William Saletan on Bush’s continual attempts to conflate the wars on terrorism and Iraq: http://slate.msn.com/id/2082419/
Here’s a paragraph:

But don't tell us this was a triumph in the war on terror, Mr. President. Don't tell us the defeat of a secular dictator has turned the tide against a gang of religious fanatics. And don't talk about patience. You inserted a battle that could have waited into a war that couldn't, precisely because you lacked-or thought we lacked-patience for the slow, diffuse, half-invisible struggle against the people who hit us on Sept. 11. You wanted a quick, clear victory, and you got it. But don't flatter yourself. You haven't changed the world in 19 months. You've only changed the subject.

I agree with all of that except the term “Mr. President.” Even before reading it, I was going to comment on a bit from the Bush speech: “The war on terror is not over; yet it is not endless. We do not know the day of final victory, but...” yadda yadda. The problem is that he is treating the “war on terror” as if it were a traditional war, with a “day of final victory,” but fighting terrorism is at least as much like a police problem, no more winnable than the war on drugs or the war on muggings.

One problem with treating this as a traditional war is that it encourages racist responses. Let’s see if I can explain that. The Bushies are encouraging us to think of terrorists as if they were a nationality, as if they all came from one (evil) place that can be bombed, when they are in fact a dispersed group of people with diverse origins (the Brits are currently trying to figure out how they produced their very first suicide bomber), and diverse ideologies. We’re being encouraged to think of them instead as an ethnic or national group, and the only ethnic group that most of them are is Arab.

I was right about Bush’s visit to the carrier being expensive, but it also kept the sailors from their homes by an extra day, after the longest deployment of a US carrier in 30 years.

Still, it gives The Nation an excuse to talk about Bush’s Texas Air National Guard service, and remind us that we still haven’t seen evidence that he didn’t go AWOL for a year.

The article does miss one of the ways in which it was ensured that Bush would never face action: he was trained on obsolete planes about to go out of service.

The only expression of outrage I’ve seen about the R’s hijacking 9/11 for their 2004 convention. And also for failing to attack Rick “Inner” Santorum.

Labour’s loss of 800 local council seats in yesterday’s elections suggest that an electoral “Baghdad bounce” is more elusive than Bush expects. One can but hope.

US soldiers, who have finally ended their occupation of the school in Fallujah, left an English-language lesson in graffiti--“Eat Shit Iraq,” “I love pork,” etc etc. Did I mention that the locals were sure that the soldiers were using night-vision to check out their women?

The CIA wants new powers to issue demands for information from libraries, internet providers, etc etc in the US (without a warrant, of course).

Former secretary of education and upholder of the nation’s morals William Bennett is evidently a major gambler, having lost something like $8 million in Vegas.

Birmingham, Alabama’s chief of police, the office once held by Bull Connor, is a black woman.

And there is a highly entertaining obituary in the NY Times, of Boston’s last censor, that is not to be missed.

Let's kill him anyway

Just watched Bush’s little smirk-and-swagger-a-thon, on board a carrier, no less. They’re going to divert the path of the carrier so that Bush can take a helicopter from it to San Diego, so all in all a pretty expensive campaign ad. We should be thankful he didn’t give the speech in the flight suit he was wearing earlier, which I thought was very Michael-Dukakis-in-a-tank, although a middle-aged man in a suit and tie on an aircraft carrier is also pretty silly-looking.

“We have difficult work to do in Iraq,” he said, but then he considers tying his shoes difficult work and has never mastered the pronunciation of nuclear, so perhaps his definition of what constitutes difficult work is not everyone’s. Again he referred to the military as the “highest calling.” In your face, doctors and teachers! He said that Saddam built palaces instead of hospitals and schools. Of course now the hospitals are all looted, and the US military is occupying both the palaces and the schools, and this week shot up a crowd of people who wanted their school back, so possibly that wasn’t the best choice of words. He also tried hard to link the war to terrorism, still without offering any proof of the alliance of Iraq with al Qaida, which he mentioned yet again.

One major goal in Iraq is to rewrite their copyright laws, which only give a maximum of 50 years of protection.

So the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are both “over.” Also, the “no fly zones.” Of course the US always claimed that those were authorized by UN resolutions, so I’m not quite sure how the US can end them all by itself...

I mentioned the US acquiring records on the inhabitants of at least 7 Latin American countries. I hadn’t known that the company the government hired to do this was Choice Point, the same company that Katherine Harris used to purge black “felons” from Florida’s voting rolls. It claims that everything it did was legal, and that it protected itself by putting in its contract with its Mexican sub-contractors that they do nothing illegal. The problem there is that the records they acquired could not be acquired except illegally. On Friday, the Nicaraguan police raided the offices of Choice Point’s sub-contractors there.

In the ongoing comedy that is the only terrorist trial after 9/11, Moussaoui wants John Ashcroft to answer a multiple choice question as to what his actual theory of the case is: 1) 20th hijacker, 2) pilot of a 5th plane, 3) don’t know, 4) let’s kill him anyway. That’s not my joke, it’s Moussaoui’s. Terrific, a terrorist with stand-up comedy aspirations.

Actually, I think Ashcroft’s personal motto is Let’s kill him anyway.