They don’t know what democracy is

Writing about the incident in October when the Israeli military shot a 13-year old Palestinian girl and an officer then shot her 10 more times to “confirm the kill,” the NYT repeats the Israeli army’s first excuse, which has been completely discredited by audio tapes, that they thought her book bag was a bomb.

I’ve wondered before how the Pentagon names its military operations, usually combining two unrelated but tough-sounding elements. Mad Libs? Porn name generator? Anyway, in Afghanistan, “Operation Lightning Freedom” has commenced.

The Russian Orthodox church is considering naming a patron saint of the Internet. The choice is between Saint John Chrysostom and...wait for it...Saint Feofan the Hermit.

The Sunday Times (London) has an article on the know-your-enemy training given to some US Marines etc. They get to be pretend Muslims for a week, wearing Arab garb, praying to Mecca, eating with their hands, play-acting kidnapping and executing westerners, planting car bombs, etc. One student said, “It’s helped me to know how the enemy thinks and appreciate how sophisticated they are.” And the lesson he draws from this? “I’d kill them all. They don’t know what democracy is.”

Disney is building a new disneyland in Hong Kong. They consulted a master of feng shui in designing the park, presumably so that kids on the roller coasters will throw up in the most propitious direction. Now they just need to attract Chinese families, not especially familiar with Mickey, Donald, Winnie the Pooh etc, to the Magic Kingd... uh, Magic People’s Republic. So they have struck up a partnership with the Communist Youth League to indoctrinate Chinese children in Disneyana.

Psst, kid

WaPo: “[American] troops use soccer balls and school supplies, candy and small talk to win over Iraqis”. Great, now we’re copying the techniques of child molesters.

I was right to be serene

Charles Pickering, who Bush recess-appointed to the 5th Circuit when his racist past prevented his nomination succeeding in the Senate, has decided to retire, less than a week before his term was up, issuing a statement attacking those who opposed him as “extreme special-interest groups” hostile to people with religious views. The self-important twit ascribed the defeat of some unnamed D Senators to their opposition to his nomination.

Silvio Berlusconi escapes jail yet again on two charges of bribing judges, back in the 1980s before he could simply restructure the entire judiciary and change any law he wanted to break. He was acquitted on one charge, and on the other the charge was dismissed, although it was proven, because of the statute of limitations. This is somewhat confusing, actually, because there is a discretionary element to the statute of limitations if the defendant has no criminal record. So the judges today decided to halve the statute of limitations from 15 to 7½ years (the bribe was paid in 1991). Also, there was a delay in the trial when Berlusconi got a law passed making himself immune from criminal prosecution; the trial resumed when the law was overturned. Berlusconi is smugly pretending that he was exonerated: “I was right to be serene, knowing full well that I had done nothing wrong.”

Credibility and cohesion

Colin Powell castigates certain members of NATO for refusing to participate in the training of the Iraqi military. Bush frequently says that he won’t seek “permission slips” from foreign bodies for military actions, but when other countries assert what Powell belittles as their “national caveat or national exception,” he accuses them of “hurting [NATO’s] credibility and cohesion”. Yes, how dare Germany and France have their own foreign policies.

Still, you could see how Powell might identify with poor NATO’s plight, since after 4 years as Chimpy’s sock puppet, he himself has no credibility or cohesion.

At that NATO meeting, the German foreign minister gave Powell two cases and a keg of German beer, which won’t help with the credibility and cohesion problem, but should ease his retirement: I foresee Powell doing a lot of drinking to forget the last 4 years of his life. The NATO Secretary General with the amusing name Jaap de Hoop Scheffer (just say it out loud a few times; it will make your whole day: Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer) gave him some Belgian beer and a model of a Volvo.

Bush says of Spc. Wilson’s question to Indefensible Secretary Rumsfeld, “if I were a soldier overseas, wanting to defend my country, I’d want to ask the secretary of defense the same question.” Rising Hegemon comments: “If you had asked the question, the troops would not have had to do it for you. Asshole.”

“In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.”-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge. What does it say about this country’s post-9/11 willingness to exchange civil liberties for security that even Russ Feingold voted for the intelligence reform bill despite the scary powers it gives the feds to lock people up without trial, knowing full well that “This Justice Department has a record of abusing its detention powers post-9/11 and of making terrorism allegations that turn out to have no merit.” Unlike most senators, who should know better, Feingold actually does.

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

There were questions that were highly complimentary and very friendly and very interested and very supportive

Maureen Dowd writes that Shrub prefers people who feed him “swaggering fictions” rather than uncomfortable facts.

I haven’t (hitherto) piled on to Bernie Kerik, Chimpy’s nominee to head the Dept of Heimat Security, mostly because everyone else was doing it. And every article and blog post seems to have some other detail: the Village Voice has articles about the crappy job he did in NY; Talking Points Memo has been trying to figure out what happened while he was supposed to be training Iraqi police that made him leave prematurely; there have been stories about questionable business connections, using NYPD personnel for personal business, thuggery in Saudi Arabia, an illegitimate child he abandoned in Korea, etc. It’s too much for any one story, but this one is a good brief overview. Kerik’s appointment suggests to me that Bush has no intention of making the DHS, whose establishment he opposed, work. Which is good and bad news because, like the intelligence reform bill just passed, you’d like to see coordination improved to prevent a future 9/11, without all the police-state add-on’s.

For me, though, one single sentence of Kerik’s disqualifies him from the post: “If you put Senator Kerry in the White House, I think you are going to see that [terrorist attacks] happen.” He has proven his willingness to politicize the issue of terrorism for partisan purposes.

Speaking of people in jobs they are unfit for, Secretary of Defensiveness Rumsfeld says he is surprised that the media focused on the questions posed to him by troops yesterday about vehicle armor, and National Guard units getting stuck with antiquated equipment, and the stop-loss program, and why soldiers weren’t being paid and why National Guards now doing the exact same job as the regular military are being paid less, and whether they couldn’t just all go to Disneyland instead (really), when otherwise “[i]t It was a very fine, warm, enjoyable meeting. There were lots of questions; they covered the full spectrum. There were questions that were highly complimentary and very friendly and very interested and very supportive.” Incidentally, the armor question was fed to Spc. Wilson by Edward Lee Pitts of the Chattanooga Times, frustrated by Rummy’s refusal to answer questions from actual journalists.

Australian PM and racist swine John Howard says it is “common sense” to condition aid to aboriginal communities on things like making their children wash their faces twice a day.

Bush attended a Hanukkah ceremony today, although he was heard to comment that the lamps wouldn’t have needed to burn for eight days if there had been enough oil wells in Alaska. Note that in the picture in this story of the menorah-lighting (performed by the children of an army rabbi (“one of our Jewish chaplains”) deployed in Iraq, because even Hanukkah is actually about his stupid war now, Shrub’s chimplike head is uncovered.

Tantamount to discipline?

As we know, US soldiers never “torture” prisoners, they “abuse” them. But when the WaPo says that 4 Special Forces soldiers have been “disciplined” for “abusing” prisoners with tasers (the NYT uses the same wording in its headline), we know that “disciplined” isn’t a euphemism for, say, going to prison but for...wait for it... receiving letters of reprimand. Jolly strict letters of reprimand, I’m sure. Pentagon spokesmoron Lawrence Di Rita was asked whether the use of tasers was tantamount to torture and replied, “I have nothing to say on that. I just don’t know.” Don’t know? Well I have a suggestion for how to dispel Di Rita’s lack of clarity on whether tasering is torture, and it involves another press conference, 4 reporters (perhaps including Helen Thomas), 4 taser guns, and my VCR recording the whole thing.

What is the WaPo trying to say when it includes the story “Chicken Genome Decoded” in the “Washington in Brief” section?

From Knight Ridder: “There is no comprehensive way to quantify how rebel activity has been affected nationwide by the Fallujah assault. American officials no longer make available to reporters a daily tally of the number of incidents reported around the country.” Not that reporters should consider Pentagon figures to be “comprehensive” in the first place, of course.

The Bush admin files a friend-of-the-Lord brief asking the Supreme Court to allow displays of the 10 Commandments in court houses. Evidently they are “historic symbols of law” and not of religion. Who knew?

Hamid Karzai calls for a “jihad” against opium. Jihad, Afghanistan, that always goes well.

I don’t want people going out inciting people against devil worshippers

Europe continues a move away from freedom of speech. The British government is introducing a bill to punish the incitement of religious hatred. Which is subjective enough to potentially cover criticizing or making fun of religions (Rowan Atkinson is campaigning against the bill). Any religion. The Tories think it shouldn’t cover Satanists but Home Sec David Blunkett, who likes raising a bit of hell himself, says, “I don’t want people going out inciting people against devil worshippers.”

And the French are passing a law to ban anti-gay or sexist insults. The Catholic Church is not happy. In the interests of improving your vocabulary, this is The Times’s translation from France Soir: “Calling a woman mal baisée (sexually frustrated) or uttering a homophobic enculé (a***hole) could cost you six months’ jail.” [That’s not one * too many--the Times means arsehole] The group SOS homophobie plans to prosecute soccer fans who chant pédés (queers) at players. Although it is expected to be dropped at the conference stage, there is also a provision against making fun of the handicapped, which was inserted by a homophobic MP trying to imply that homosexuality, and presumably being a woman, were also handicaps (the MP is a woman). Job discrimination against homosexuals will also be banned. This is the country which is busily expelling Muslim girls wearing headscarves, and Sikhs, from public schools, so a bit of a mixed message really.

You go to war with the Army you have

In Kuwait, a US soldier asked Secretary of War Rumsfeld why, after 3 years of warfare, “we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles.” Rummy’s callous, dismissive response: “You go to war with the Army you have.” Also, he added, who needs armor anyway? “You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and it can (still) be blown up.”

To recap: North Korea finally admitted kidnapping Japanese citizens, but claimed they had almost all died, and their remains conveniently washed out to sea in floods. Last month they gave back what they said were the remains of a Japanese woman, who they said had committed suicide 17 years after her kidnapping. The DNA shows that the remains are not hers.

The British Tory party is pushing an issue they hope to ride back into power: letting homeowners kill burglars.

The myth that the terrorists are fighting a foreign occupation

Bush went to Camp Pendleton today, in his spiffy new Kim Jong Il/Bond villain uniform.


Despite it being December 7, he made only one glancing reference to Pearl Harbor. He did, however, talk about 9/11, once again linking it to Iraq: “Our success in Iraq will make America safer for us and for future generations. As one Marine sergeant put it, ‘I never want my children to experience what we saw in New York, at the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania.’” He also went on and on about how wonderful soldiers are, which would be fine if he ever did the same--and meant it--for teachers or doctors.

He also said that “When Iraqis choose their leaders in free elections, it will destroy the myth that the terrorists are fighting a foreign occupation and make clear that what the terrorists are really fighting is the will of the Iraqi people”. “Myth” is too silly to need a comment from me, so let’s focus on the notion of a single, undivided “will of the Iraqi people.” There is no such thing, and the concept is actually dangerous in an ethnically, religiously and politically divided polity like Iraq’s, because it treats dissent, compromise and pluralism as illegitimate. There is no room for a Kurd, a Shiite or indeed a secularist in this “will of the Iraqi people.”

Also, he said all this just three days after praising general slash president slash dictator Musharaf as proving that Muslim societies can “self-govern.”

Speaking of champions of democracy, Vladimir Putin says he “cannot imagine” how elections will take place in Iraq.

The Serbian military is paying a pension to indicted war criminal Ratko Mladic (remember him?). Mladic is of course in hiding, and his check is picked up by a relative.

Pakistan’s federal law banning the execution of minors has been overturned, allowing Punjab province to hang criminals as young as... 7. But at least they can self-govern.

Karzai explains his strategy for hiding male pattern baldness.

Or maybe the Cookie Monster didn’t want to be seen with Chimpy

Monday George Bush met the presidents of Senegal and Iraq, the king of Jordan and the Cookie Monster. Also, Elmo. No pictures were taken, or none I could find, which happens when US presidents meet controversial figures like Salman Rushdie or the Dalai Lama.

Karzai was inaugurated as president of Afghanistan, after swearing to uphold Islam. Cheney and Rumsfeld were on hand, Cheney telling US troops occupying the country that “For the first time the people of this country are looking confident about the future of freedom and peace.” And then he and Rummy ran for their lives, having been advised not to let the sun set on them in Kabul because it was too dangerous.

The WaPo does a very respectable job of discrediting Bush’s claim that the attack on the US embassy in Saudi Arabia had anything to do with elections in Iraq. If only they had fact-checked him so assiduously before the election.

Practicing the 3 F’s in Fallujah

(Updated at end)

A shopping center in Wales is using a webcam to assure parents that Santa isn’t molesting their children. Ho ho ho.

The US military’s plans for Fallujah show a surprising familiarity with the works of Michel Foucault. They will take DNA samples and retinal scans from every Fallujahovian, make them wear badges with their addresses at all times, and perform forced labor cleaning up the messes the US made in the city. Says a colonel quoted by the Boston Globe, “You have to say, ‘Here are the rules,’ and you are firm and fair. That radiates stability.” Firm, fair, and I think you’re leaving out “fascist.” The colonel says they should stop trying all that “Oprah shit” in Iraq, because Iraqis just want to “figure out who the dominant tribe is” and follow it. So we’re modeling our strategy on wolf packs now. Explains all the territory-marking.

Firm and fair.... fucker
(Update: Bush said today, “The American people must understand that democracy just doesn’t happen overnight. It is a process. It is an evolution. After all, look at our own history. We had great principles enunciated in our Declarations of Independence and our Constitution, yet, we had slavery for a hundred years.” So he’s establishing slavery in Fallujah because it’s part of a process, an evolutionary process, yet. In 100 years they’ll be ready for a major civil war and then another 100 years of segregation and the denial of civil rights and then.... See, and you thought Bush didn’t have a plan.)

Better than Christmas

US Marine Colonel Ron Johnson, on Iraqi elections: “The idea of being able to vote is so exciting to these people, it’s better than Christmas.” What, even better than the birth of our Lord and Savior? Johnson’s a regular Lawrence of frickin’ Arabia.

Speaking of military morons, Mark Kimmitt, M.M., reappears, telling Al-Jazeera that the new photos of prisoner abuse will be used as a “tool” to show the US military in a negative light. And that’s Kimmitt’s job.

Still speaking of military morons, Pakistani’s General Musharaf shows, in a WaPo interview, how deeply he has entered into underwear-shall-be-worn-on-the-outside territory. His nation presided over an irresponsible spread of nuclear technology, but it would show “a lack of trust” in him personally to demand to interview A Q Khan. And there is “total democracy in Pakistan” because he personally holds the country together--how very Sun King of him; no wonder he gets along so well with the Texas Twit. And Bushies are briefing the press that his refusal to give up his army post is of no significance.

Carl Hiaasen notes that before the election FEMA spent a lot of money compensating people in the Miami-Dade area for hurricane damage, despite the fact that the Miami-Dade area was not hit by any hurricanes.

Responding to Tommy Thompson’s rather belated warning about the danger of the US food supply being poisoned, Bush says, “We’re doing everything we can to protect the American people.” Don’t you feel reassured by that vague statement from a man who once survived an attack by a hostile pretzel?

The Thai government has gone ahead with its plans to end the civil war with Muslim separatists by dropping litter on them, folded into origami birds. Said the military, one of these puppies dropped from 10,000 feet can take out a farm house. OK, they didn’t say that, but it still seems like a transparent PR stunt to me, from a government simultaneously planning to give itself the power to detain people without trial.

I'm going to Disneyl... I mean Tora Bora!

The Scottish Parliament has its own website now, and “We hae producit information anent the Pairlament in a reenge o different leids tae help ye tae find oot mair.” So that’s convenient.

Note that the announcement that Secretary of War Rumsfeld will be staying on came the day after he appeared on Fox trash-talking Iran.

Afghanistan is planning to turn the Tora Bora caves into a tourist destination.

An Israeli bank issues a credit card that doesn’t work on the Sabbath.

More pictures of tortured Iraqi prisoners surface.

The position of our government is that the will of the people must be known and heard

The US government says that it’s ok if evidence derived from torture is used in the Guantanamo tribunals. The argument was made in district court by Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Brian Boyle--not just any deputy associate attorney general, but the principal deputy associate attorney general. Really, if the US government is going to argue in favor of torture, the argument should be made by someone a little higher up.

Bush: “It’s time for the Iraqi citizens to go to the polls. And that’s why we are very firm on the January 30th date.” In what way does that constitute an argument? The reason the Iraqis should vote on Jan. 30 is that “it’s time.” That’s all ya got?

Chimpy really does have an extraordinary talent for making anything he says sound empty and meaningless. In that same mini-news conference he continued his discourse on democratic political theory, in the tradition of Locke, Montesquieu, Madison and “Democracy for Dummmies,” this time talking about Ukraine: “The position of our government is that the will of the people must be known and heard. ... But any election in any country must be -- must reflect the will of the people and not that of any foreign government.” Which means what, if anything, in practical terms, in policy terms? Those words literally tell you nothing about anything. He has an ability to answer a question, and the sum total of knowledge and understanding in the universe actually declines.

If you’re lucky, it’s only a pop quiz

Headline from the Press Association for a British story: “Man Released after Terrorism Quiz.” If a car bomb leaves the station going west at 30 mph....

WaPo headline: “Lesbian Minister’s Credentials Revoked.” I didn’t even know there was a lesbian licensing board.

The US Embassy in Iraq gives up on using the road to the Baghdad Airport, and the adopt-a-highway program may also be dropped.




Incidentally, I meant the thing in the post title about pop quiz as a comment on “terrorism quiz” in the first item (a pop as opposed to a bang), not as a comment on my notion of a lesbian licensing board in the second item (a pop as opposed to a bang) (I don’t know what that would mean, but it sounds dirty, which is the important thing).

Sometimes a train metaphor is just a train metaphor

Alabama, whose politics are always good for sick entertainment, has a state legislator, one Gerald Allen, who wishes to ban books with gay characters or otherwise serve the “homosexual agenda” from public libraries, including in universities (they have universities in Alabama, who knew?). Sez Mr. Allen, “Our culture, how we know it today, is under attack from every angle.” I’m sure some angles worry him more than others. Sez Mr. Allen, “It’s a small minority group of citizens who drive the train on our culture.” Some alarmist from the Southern Poverty Law Center says this sounds like Nazi book burning, but in fact Allen advocates burying the books in a big hole, so that’s ok then.

Having the people on our side and not overwhelming them with too much garbage

Shock! Horror! Stop the Fucking Presses! “Some Abstinence Programs Mislead Teens, Report Says,” according to the Washington Post. If public schools don’t tell the truth about the horrors of having sexual intercourse, who can we trust? There are some who say that being lied to about sex in school will perfectly prepare children for being lied to about sex in the real world, but they are just base cynics.

Funny AP headline: “Israel Vows Mideast Peace Unless Provoked.”

Westerners seem to have difficulty with supporting democracy in the abstract. Take for example the coverage of the Ukrainian elections. Both pock-marked Mr Y and square-headed Mr Y are bureaucrats, comfortable with the corrupt, cronyistic political culture that has dominated Ukraine’s government since independence. There is no particular evidence that square-headed Mr Y is trying to “install an authoritarian regime like that of Russian President Vladimir Putin,” as the WaPo claims in an editorial. There is no particular evidence that pock-marked Mr Y is the second coming of Thomas Jefferson or even Vaclav Havel. By the same token, the fact that the EU and US have been supporting and funding the supporters of pock-marked Mr Y does not, as several articles in the Guardian have suggested, necessarily taint them. Non-Ukrainians of all stripes have exhibited the same failure as the Bushies, which is to send a clear implicit message that “democracy” is only good when it generates an outcome we like. One result of this is to create magical expectations for elections that will inevitably be crushed. When pock-marked Mr Y turns out not to be the heroic reformer the West has painted him as, but a rather ordinary administrator, how will the people who have stood in the streets waving orange flags in the freezing cold for days feel? Democracy is a quotidian process, it is not confined to the selection every few years of a benevolent, omniscient philosopher-prince.

Speaking of benevolent, omniscient philosopher-princes, Governor Schwarzenegger is thinking about to put his “reform” plans to the voters over the heads of the legislature. Says the beefy Austrian, “We’re going to plan it carefully so we’re going to continue making progress and having the people on our side and not overwhelming them with too much garbage.” Finally, a leader willing to take a stand on not overwhelming us with too much garbage!

Oh, one of those initiatives would involve changing the way reappportionment is done in this state, and rewriting districts early, as in Texas.

Roads to rubble

Tex of UnFairWitness did the research I didn’t bother to do yesterday, and finds that Shrub does describe foreign female leaders as “strong leaders,” or at least did so in making a completely inappropriate endorsement (10/14/03) of the re-election of Philippines President Gloria Arroyo.

Speaking of strong leaders, Colombia’s parliament has voted to change the law to allow incipient-dictator Uribe to be re-elected in 2006.

Still speaking of strong leaders, Marwan Barghouti will run for Palestinian president after all. A president in prison for a people in prison, or something like that. Most of the newspaper stories about him lately have been curiously vague about exactly what he was convicted of. It was for supposedly supplying arms and money to people involved in attacks on Israelis in which 5 died. He was acquitted of 33 other counts of murder.

When Israel pulls out of Gaza, according to the London Times, “To avoid scenes of Palestinians triumphantly taking over the settlements, the Israelis would destroy homes and other buildings but leave basic infrastructure like roads intact.” Isn’t that special?

Living the good life in Fallujah

It’s hard to know how seriously to take a UN report calling for reform of the UN, but there’s a new one out which wants the Security Council to be expanded and given the power to issue licenses for preemptive wars. Bush said repeatedly that he didn’t need a “permission slip” to bomb the shit out of whomever he wished to bomb the shit out of, but the UN seems to be so desirous of proving its continuing “relevancy” that it wants to get into the permission-slip-writing biz big time, including for “anticipatory self-defense.”

The NYT says of the report, “In a sentence that may have been directed at members of the United Nations who habitually condemn violence by Israel while making no mention of attacks on Israel, the report said, ‘There is nothing in the fact of occupation that justifies the targeting and killing of civilians.’” Really? Hands up anyone who thinks that the Resistance in Nazi-occupied France weren’t justified in killing informers.

The NYT also reports...and I know this will shock all of you...that Fallujah was damaged to a much greater extent than the Americans or the Comical Allawi Clique have been willing to admit, including the complete destruction of the power grid, and the near-complete destruction of the sewage and water system. The paper says the Americans will “cede major decisions to the Iraqi interim government,” the people unwilling to admit that any real damage actually took place. Cars will be banned from Fallujah to prevent car bombs. Americans are paying people who were injured or whose homes were completely destroyed as much as $2,500, which I’m sure in the current buyer’s market is more than enough to replace a house and all its possessions--in fact, I’m thinking of moving there myself and livin’ like a king. Hell, there wouldn’t even be any electric or water bills to worry about.

I’m the kind of fella who does what I think is right

So there Bush is in Canada, which is somehow more embarrassing than watching him in other foreign countries, in the same way that listening to him try to speak Spanish in a Spanish-speaking country is a bit less cringe-inducing than listening to him try to speak English in an English-speaking country. At least in Canada, he’d know pretty quickly if his fly was down.

At their press conference, Le Chimpanzé, as he is known in Quebec, or should be, called PM Martin a “strong leader.” Every time he meets a foreign leader, he calls him or her (actually, I’m not sure about the “or her”) a strong leader, every single time.

Asked about Canadian opinion polls showing opposition to his own, ahem, strong leadership, he replied that only the American election matters, and “I made some decisions, obviously, that some in Canada didn’t agree with, like, for example, removing Saddam Hussein and enforcing the demands of the United Nations Security Council.” And he said it--the transcript doesn’t do it justice--with that smirk, the one that launched a thousand flag-burnings. “I’m the kind of fella who does what I think is right,” he said, adding “I will consult with our friends and neighbours, but if I think it’s right to remove Saddam Hussein for the security of the United States, that’s the course of action I’ll take.” Maybe foreign soil is not the best place to announce that you only give a shit about the opinions and security of Americans.

But he also highlighted the many wars we’ve fought together, including: “America and Canada are working to further the spread of democracy in our own hemisphere. In Haiti, Canada was a leader along with the United States, France, Chile, and other nations in helping to restore order.” Those two sentences only appear to be related, since in Haiti we actually helped overthrow democracy.

Bush and Prime Minister Paul Martin

Fiddler on the border

Tom Ridge resigns because “I wanted to raise some personal and family matters to a slightly higher priority.” He uses color codes for everything, doesn’t he? [Insert your own joke here about how he asks his wife for sex.] At his press conference, he talked about the hardships for his family when he was called by Bush to come to Washington on short notice, and how he looks forward to his son’s rugby games, and he said all this without any recognition that there are reservists and victims of “stop-loss” orders in Iraq without the ability to say “I just want to step back and pay a little more attention to some other personal matters.” (If that criticism seems strained or unfair, well, I’m not the one who keeps insisting this is a “war” on terrorism.)

Carlos the Jackal has gone on hunger strike against prison conditions, the poor baby. He has done this before; on 11/13/98 I wrote: “Carlos the Jackal is on hunger strike. What do jackals normally eat, anyway? Carrion? In a French prison that would of course be carrion with a really superb sauce and exactly the right wine.”

The Israeli military is now claiming that they didn’t order the Palestinian to play his violin at the checkpoint (they initially said they made him do it to prove there were no explosives in the violin, a story disproved by a photo of the event, showing him playing just a couple of feet away from the soldiers), that in fact he just started up spontaneously. The violinist says not. They told him to play “something sad.” We still don’t know what he played--honestly, reporters these days.

A basic human right all of us should treasure

The Dept of Homeland Security is forcing employees to sign pledges not to disclose non-classified information. See if any 20th-century English authors come to mind as you read this statement by dept spokesmodel Valerie Smith (if that is her real name): “The nondisclosure agreements do not limit the dissemination of information in any way.”

Did you all come up with Orwell? Of course you did, how could you not. Now see if you can read another part of Ms. “Smith”’s statement without laughing bitterly: “The notion that the agreement would be used to cover up evidence of wrongdoing is baseless.”

The Iraqi elections will be fought by 200+ political parties. Each one will have its own logo, although the WaPo reports that “some logos have been prohibited, including a Koran with a halo around it, a mass grave and a Kalashnikov rifle.” Um, was that party for or against mass graves? If anyone sees a website with any of these party logos, please pass it on.

A WaPo editorial argues against postponing elections, “the only peaceful means for establishing an Iraqi government with real authority,” in the same paragraph that it says those elections will require “continued U.S. and Iraqi military operations to clear insurgents from Sunni towns”. The WaPo must be using some arcane definition of the word “peaceful” with which I am not familiar. Oh dear, we’re all thinking about George Orwell again, aren’t we?

Speaking of “War = Peace,” numerous blogs have mentioned this site, selling t-shirts in support of the Marine who shot the unarmed POW in Fallujah, and other overpriced t-shirts to buy for the sociopath who has everything.

Well, as long as we’re in full-Orwell mode, here’s what the British home secretary David Blunkett said today about mandatory identity cards (which will involve a £2,500 for those who resist, and a £1,000 fine for moving without telling the government): “Strengthening our identity is one way of reinforcing confidence and people's sense of citizenship. Knowing your true identity and being able to demonstrate it is a positive plus [double plus good?]. It is a basic human right all of us should treasure”.

I missed this: in this month’s election, Tom Parker, an aide to Roy Moore, was elected to the Alabama Supreme Court. He is known for his love of the Confederate flag and recently attended a party commemorating Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan (but not, as the Associated Press says, the founder). This in the same election where the state failed to pass a referendum removing segregationist language from the state constitution.

The cleansing in Fallujah of terrorist elements is continuing

Allawi: “The level of criminal operations has receded and is continuing to drop following the operation in Fallujah ... The cleansing in Fallujah of terrorist elements is continuing and we are preparing for the residents to return to their city”. Isn’t it... special... when the interim acting puppet prime minister of a country refers to the killing of his fellow citizens, even citizens he doesn’t like, as “cleansing”?

I’m not sure if that interview was conducted before or after a bomb killed a bunch of policemen. I’ve wondered in the past why after the third, or fourth, or fifth time a car bomb killed people standing on line to join the Iraqi police or military, they were still made to stand on line in the street, but it seems that even after they join up, they still have to stand on line to get paid.

Last week, the “coalition” launched a new military campaign in the “triangle of death,” called Operation Plymouth Rock. How very seasonal.

Oxford Concise Dictionary: “Leader: a short strip of non-functioning material at each end of a reel of film or recording tape for connection to the spool.”

And worth every penny

I thought it was a little odd when Israel meekly agreed not to interfere with Palestinians in East Jerusalem voting in the PA elections. But in fact they are obstructing voter registration.

In his Thanksgiving Day proclamation, Bush praised those who helped the needy: “By seeking out those who are hurting and by lending a hand, Americans touch the lives of their fellow citizens and help make our Nation and the world a better place.” But that was then. The NYT reports that Bush donors are being asked to give yet again to fund his inauguration to the tune of 40+ million dollars, which is a lot of hookers and coke. Is it actually appropriate in a democratic republic to have a $40 million inauguration? And does that include the accessories?:

How to shed those extra holiday pounds

Ukraine seems to be moving towards a re-run of the presidential election, which is fine as far as it goes, since it is impossible to determine the true result of the last one. But what are the conditions required for a new, fair election? Yushchenko’s people are demanding that Yanukovych not be allowed to fight it as sitting prime minister, and that the electoral commission be purged. Meanwhile, the regional legislature of Donetsk has voted 164-1--repeat, 164 to 1--to hold a referendum on autonomy for the region before on Dec. 5, before any possible presidential election re-run. Clearly the regional fissures won’t go away no matter which Mr. Y becomes president.

Zimbabwe has land-reformed itself into a basket case, and millions have fled the country’s poverty and fascism (a term I don’t use lightly, except when I do: Zim has re-education camps, secret police, racist rhetoric, the forcible disbanding of every independent institution, etc). The government’s newest solution to its inability to run the farms it seized from whites: “obesity tourism.” Lure rich fat white tourists from, say, the US, to “provide labour for farms in the hope of shedding weight while enjoying the tourism experience. ... The tourists can then top it all by flaunting their slim bodies on a sun-downer cruise on the Zambezi or surveying the majestic Great Zimbabwe ruins.”

He’d also like Santy to bring him a pony

Bush refuses to criticize the pork-laden spending bill, but does say, “I hope the Congress will give me a line-item veto.” Moron Boy evidently doesn’t know that Congress can’t do that, that the last time they tried it was struck down by the Supreme Court (in 1998) as unconstitutional. How can he not know that?

What’s wrong with this picture: the WaPo buries the story about the alleged assassination attempt on Bush on p.24, in World in Brief. Dunno which page it’s on in the NYT, but they don’t seem to take the story seriously either, noting that the Colombians made the claim “without offering details or proof.”

The attempted coup plot in Equatorial Guinea, in which Margaret Thatcher’s idiot son Mark is implicated, was known in advance by the British and American governments, neither of which told the...whatever you call residents of Equatorial Guinea (2 stories in the Observer).

Michael Kinsley states the obvious, but he states it well: all the talk about “values” is a way of putting a thumb on the scale in favor of one’s own views by making it literally an act of bad taste to challenge them: “a value just seems inherently more compelling than a mere opinion. ... the holder of a value is held to be more sensitive to slights than the holder of an opinion. An opinion can’t just slug away at a value. It must be solicitous and understanding. A value may tackle an opinion, meanwhile, with no such constraint.”

Bush meets Dr. No

A WaPo story about the US decision not to attend an international conference on land mines claims, “At present, the United States does not maintain land mines anywhere in the world.” Actually, we use millions of the things in Korea.

For some reason only the BBC has this: the Colombian government is claiming that it thwarted a guerilla plan to assassinate Bush when he visited there Monday. Me, I wouldn’t trust anything the Uribe gov told me without tons of corroboration. Hopefully this thing gets disproved quickly, so that one day we won’t have President Jenna invading Colombia because “they tried to kill my dad.”

Bush tried to help the Northern Ireland peace process today, which should ensure another 300 years of civil war. Specifically, the most stubborn person in the US (that would be Bush) telephoned the Rev. Ian Paisley, the most stubborn human being on the planet. Oh how I’d love a tape of that conversation.

What, no “defenestration?”

The city of Carmel, California passes an emergency ban on new art galleries. The town has one gallery for every 34 residents, so you can see how that would constitute an emergency.

The German police shoot Santa Claus dead, after he robs a bank.

Sold on eBay for $26: this picture of the Virgin Mary eating a grilled cheese sandwich with an image of herself on it. I think I can guess what the next item for sale will be.




The British Council conducted a survey of non-native-English-speakers of their favorite English words:

1 Mother
2 Passion
3 Smile
4 Love
5 Eternity
6 Fantastic
7 Destiny
8 Freedom
9 Liberty
10 Tranquillity
11 Peace
12 Blossom
13 Sunshine
14 Sweetheart
15 Gorgeous
16 Cherish
17 Enthusiasm
18 Hope
19 Grace
20 Rainbow
21 Blue
22 Sunflower
23 Twinkle
24 Serendipity
25 Bliss
26 Lullaby
27 Sophisticated
28 Renaissance
29 Cute
30 Cosy
31 Butterfly
32 Galaxy
33 Hilarious
34 Moment
35 Extravaganza
36 Aqua
37 Sentiment
38 Cosmopolitan
39 Bubble
40 Pumpkin
41 Banana
42 Lollipop
43 If
44 Bumblebee
45 Giggle
46 Paradox
47 Delicacy
48 Peekaboo
49 Umbrella
50 Kangaroo
51 Flabbergasted
52 Hippopotamus
53 Gothic
54 Coconut
55 Smashing
56 Whoops
57 Tickle
58 Loquacious
59 Flip-flop
60 Smithereens
61 Oi
62 Gazebo
63 Hiccup
64 Hodgepodge
65 Shipshape
66 Explosion
67 Fuselage
68 Zing
69 Gum
70 Hen night

Yes, but is it art?

In case you thought that the Virgin Mary & grilled cheese sandwich story was the only news story involving old white bread this week, the artist Antony Gormley is exhibiting at the Tate this piece, in which he chewed (or as he would doubtless put it, sculpted) his own body weight out of 8,000 pieces of bread, preserved in wax.

(OK, I’ve looked at his website, and some of his non-bread-related sculpture is rather good, or at least it is when put in interesting surroundings and photographed)(Oh, he’s the guy who did the Angel of the North, I thought the name was familiar).

Action on locusts

The Czech Republic approves pensions for former political prisoners, pro-rated.

Headline of the day: “Israel Demands Action on Locusts.” (Locusts are crossing the border from Egypt)

From the Daily Telegraph:

An Italian judge has ruled that an elderly married couple can divorce but should continue to live under the same roof - with the husband’s lover.

The decision by the high court in Pordenone near Venice was made after the wife filed for divorce, and asked for the marital home. But the judge said the house was big enough for “everyone to live in comfortably”.

Jonathan Steele has a cautionary article about Yushchenko personally, and about the forms of intervention by the US and EU in Ukraine’s election. And he’s correct that Mr Y is not the liberal reformer or democrat he’s being portrayed as, but it’s about the democratic process, not the candidate. And Steele’s suggestion of power-sharing is ridiculous.

A bunch of diplomats went to the Thanksgiving dinner of the US Ambassador to the UN food agencies in Rome, which right off sounds like a not-too-bright thing to do. They drew tickets at random, which divided them into 3 groups, 1 of which got a gourmet meal, 1 got some rice and beans, and 1 was shoved out of the house into the garden with a little bit of cold rice.

The Bush admin wanted to more than double federal spending on abstinence-only “education,” but only got a 30% increase. Studies of the programs at the state level have shown that they don’t work, but the Bushies have delayed releasing a national evaluation until 2006, saying that if Congress really loves and respects them, it won’t mind waiting. The assistant secretary of Health and Human Services in charge of abstinence funding is named...wait for it...Wade Horn. Oh, and a HHS spokesman is named Bill Pierce, which could also sound dirty.

I’ve just looked up Mr., um, Horn, and there are bigger problems with him than the funny name. The abstinence thing is part of his larger fatherhood (i.e., anti-feminist) agenda: he really hates the idea of single women bringing up children, and has advocated having the government pressure them to give up their children to be adopted by two-parent couples, for example by denying them housing, welfare and other benefits.

No moral right to push a major European country to mass mayhem

Ha’aretz headline: “Soldiers Force Palestinian to Play Violin at W. Bank Checkpoint.” At least they didn’t shoot at his feet to make him dance at the same time. Ha’aretz doesn’t tell us what music he was forced to play.

Favorite story of fraud in the Ukrainian election: voters being given pens with invisible ink with which to mark their ballots.

I’ve been wondering about the geography of the political divide in Ukraine (I swear I’ll support whichever candidate restores the The to The Ukraine, it just seems naked without it). This Indy article explains it.

Putin urges on EU countries the restraint he hasn’t shown on Ukraine: “We have no moral right to push a major European country to mass mayhem.” Can’t we do it just for fun?

Wherein I give thanks for a Bush Turkey Day Proclamation to make fun of

Bush’s Thanksgiving Day Proclamation is stuffed full of God-y goodness. “We are grateful for our freedom, grateful for our families and friends, and grateful for the many gifts of America. On Thanksgiving Day, we acknowledge that all of these things, and life itself, come from the Almighty God.” I thought it was from my parents fucking.

Oo, a history lesson: “Almost four centuries ago, the Pilgrims celebrated a harvest feast to thank God after suffering through a brutal winter.” No, they would have thanked God for SURVIVING the winter, not for the suffering; they were Puritans, not masochists thanking their dominatrix. Also, did the Puritans settle in South America? because up here, winter usually comes AFTER November (and the 1621 wingding was actually in October).

“By seeking out those who are hurting and by lending a hand, Americans touch the lives of their fellow citizens and help make our Nation and the world a better place.” You’ll notice that nation gets an initial cap but the world doesn’t.

“We are grateful to the homeland security and intelligence personnel who spend long hours on faithful watch. And we give thanks for the Americans in our Armed Forces who are serving around the world to secure our country and advance the cause of freedom.” Yes, don’t forget to thank the Lord Jesus for the Department of Homeland Security and the spooks of the CIA.

Why the killing of intelligence reform, and proper subject-verb agreement, matter

NYT headline: “Data on Deaths From Obesity Is Inflated, U.S. Agency Says.” Let me explain this again: one datum, two data. Tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk. Also, “inflated?” Is that a pathetic attempt at a joke?

Liberal Oasis reminds me of a subject I had meant to write about but forgot: this week Hastert killed the intelligence bill (whose worth I’m still agnostic on, by the way), refusing to allow a vote on it because although it would have passed with the support of D’s & R’s, it did not have a majority of Republicans. Commanding the support of a majority of Congress is no longer enough, for Hastert. The corollary of this is that Democratic lawmakers can just stay home, their opinions no longer count. This is a new reading of the constitution, a small but significant revolution.

Anything that’s mobile, that moves in the zone, even if it’s a three year old, needs to be killed

From the Guardian: “An Israeli army officer who repeatedly shot a 13-year-old Palestinian girl in Gaza dismissed a warning from another soldier that she was a child by saying he would have killed her even if she was three years old.” He is charged with conduct unbecoming an officer and illegal use of his weapon, i.e., emptying a 10-round magazine into her. When this incident happened, the Israeli military claimed that her book bag was mistaken for a bomb. In fact, the tapes show they thought no such thing, knew she was a little girl (they thought even younger), who was heading away from, not towards the army post. The officer who went to check on her reported back “I confirmed the kill,” meaning not that he checked her pulse, but that he shot her ten times, adding “Anything that’s mobile, that moves in the zone, even if it’s a three-year-old, needs to be killed. Over.” Over, indeed.

Gearing up for a probable spring general election on the slogan: “Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid,” Tony Blair announced his program in today’s Queen’s Speech: authoritarianism, authoritarianism, authoritarianism. Compulsory identity cards, compulsory drug testing of arrestees, with prosecutions for “possession” for those with drugs in their bloodstream, trials without juries for alleged terrorists, a British FBI. The only thing they’ve left out--so far--is color-coded alert levels. They think that “Middle England,” like “Middle America” and “Middle Earth,” just want security, and believe that if a terrorist tries to shoot them, the bullet will bounce off their ID cards. And just to ramp it up a little, “someone” leaked a story, almost certainly untrue, that the gov stopped Al Qaida flying planes into London skyscrapers a while back.

Various municipal and regional governments in Ukraine are lining up behind one or the other of the two Mr Y’s. Doesn’t look good. The US has finally decided to pick a side, warning the Ukrainian government not to certify the elections until investigations of the massive voter fraud, and warning the government “not to use or incite violence, and to allow free media to report accurately on the situation without intimidation or coercion.” Would have been nice if they’d said anything about violence, fraud and free media before and during the elections. Now, it’s a little late. This is the problem with being the sponsor of unfree elections in Afghanistan and Iraq: we have set the bar for “democratic elections” so low that we are not credible advocates of democracy in places like Ukraine. (Good set of Ukraine photos here.)

Russia has made particularly strong statements against American and European “interference” in the elections, although Putin himself went to campaign for Yanukovych. Mr Y and the other Mr Y are being described as pro-Russian and pro-Western, as if the Cold War had revived, stripped of any ideology, centered on power and trade and nothing more.

An online casino bought a 10-year old grilled cheese sandwich with an image of the Virgin Mary for only $28,000, with no mold, proving its divine nature, and a bite taken out of it, proving that the Virgin Mary is delicious.

I get to be part of the solution

It’s great to live in a country where anyone can grow up to become president, and then have their horrific assassination turned into a video game, “JFK Reloaded.”

Soldiers at Fort Lewis, Washington, training to be guards, have been playing Guantanamo Reloaded, throwing chocolate pudding and lemon-lime Gatorade (to resemble bodily fluids) at each other. Said Lt. Col Warren Perry, “I feel good about this mission. I get to be part of the solution.”

Article on the White House website: “Mrs. Cheney Tops the National Christmas Tree.” So the stick up her ass is huge, but it’s festive.

His father threw up on the Japanese prime minister, and now he’s preparing to urinate on the Mr. Koizumi. They have real issues with Japan, don’t they?

Nuclear issues are not polite dinner conversation

The Indy on Iraqi Kurdistan, trying not to get fucked over again.

Tom Burka gets Bush’s duplicity on the intelligence bill exactly right: “I am very disappointed that I stopped the intelligence bill from making its way of out committee and I vow to work harder to see that that bill goes farther before I once again make sure that it never becomes law.” More.

One story about the Istook Clause (allowing Congressional committee chairs and their designees full access to income tax records without privacy protections) is that the IRS itself wanted it. That’s just one cow pat in the storm of bullshit, but if it’s true, there might be a reason: every few years the R’s in Congress have hearings into abuses of power by the IRS, which is one of the reason they now only audit poor people who can’t fight back. In those hearings people testify about how they were victimized, and some of those people are major tax shirkers trying to pressure the IRS to drop their cases, and the IRS can’t fight back with the truth, because those records are private. So that’s why the IRS might want this.

But Josh Marshall has the larger question right: “What does it say about the majority’s management of the legislative process in Congress at present that it’s been two and half days since this line item was discovered and no one has been able to determine who wrote it or who put it in the bill?”

What if the whole Iraqi resistance is just a fiendish conspiracy by Iraqi cabbies to drive up the price for a trip to Baghdad airport, reported as now costing more than $5,000.

At the international conference on Iraq, Colin Powell accidentally wound up seated at dinner next to the Iranian foreign minister, suggesting that Egyptian caterers are as sneaky as Iraqi cabbies. Sample dialog:

“Would you pass the salt?”

“We possess salt for peaceful purposes and will never give it in to the demands of arrogant imperialists that we give it up!”

We are told that they did not discuss nukes because, says a State dept flak, quoting Martha Stewart: “nuclear issues [are not] polite dinner conversation.”

Meanwhile, Bush, who was not at dinner at the time, did talk about Iranian nukes, working the word verify or verification into every single sentence. That “word of the day” calendar is really paying off for him. Now if he could just verify the actual pronunciation of nuclear...

Then Bush went to Colombia, protected by 15,000 troops, more than were involved in the invasion of Fallujah, and said that Colombia now had much less murder and kidnapping than it used to. He promise to continue giving the country lots of money in order to combat drug traffickers, or possibly terrorists (he pretends not to know the difference, or that right-wing groups also traffic in drugs).

Places of atrocities

A WaPo article on the alleged finding of sites in Fallujah where hostages were held goes into irony overload in quoting US military types:

“They had a sick, depraved culture of violence in that city.” Lt. Col. Daniel Wilson, an operations officer with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.

“These thugs depended on fear and control.” Maj. James West, Marine intelligence officer

“places of atrocities”. ditto

Incidentally, have you noticed how no one is talking about how important it is to capture/kill Zarqawi anymore?

Ponchopallooza

A group of Greek lawyers will sue Oliver Stone if he releases his film depicting Alexander the Great as gay.

After two incidents at the Asia-Pacific summit in which Bush and the Secret Service trampled on local law enforcement, and a state dinner was cancelled when they insisted they would put Chilean diplomats and plutocrats through metal detectors, Bush still fell for it when they gave them this, snicker, example of local, muffled guffaw, fashion to wear. It’s unclear if Putin was in on the practical joke.


The London Times: “Onlookers speculated that Mr Bush appeared particularly pleased with his because it is ideal for concealing his radio-controlled prompting device.”

I would hope that the Senate would take my word

Iraq’s parliamentary elections are now scheduled for Jan. 30. A BBC caption notes, “Violence in hotspots like Falluja threatens to disrupt the poll.” But no one ever asks if the poll threatens to disrupt the violence, the one utility we’ve succeeded in getting to run on time (little Mussolini reference there), with great efficiency. Fallujah may not have electricity or water, but it does have hot and cold running violence.

Meanwhile, back in the other imperialist war, the Catholic cardinal of Abidjan and Ivory Coast’s President Gbagbo have accused the French military of decapitating several young protesters. The defense minister of France, where the guillotine was invented, said the “outrageousness” of the claims “strips them of any credibilité.”

The Senate voted to buy Chimpy a presidential yacht, and Rising Hegemon is having a contest to name it. My entrees:

SS Shock and Awe

SS Mission Accomplished

SS Can’t Get Fooled Again

SS And I Can Start Drinking Again On It And No One Would Ever Find Out And Why Are You Writing That Down?

SS Freeance

I could do this all day. Go add your own.

Ted Stevens thinks that because he has given his word that he would never use his power to look at tax returns and then post them on the internet, they should just pass the bill. “I would hope that the Senate would take my word.” Ted, I don’t actually think you asked for this power or would use it, but I don’t want my privacy dependent on the “word” of anyone. Does the phrase “a government of laws, not men” mean anything to you? If we wanted government by unaccountable hereditary monarchs with unlimited powers we’d have... never mind.

In America, patience and fortitude will always lose to biscuits and gravy

The WaPo notes, in an editorial I can’t be arsed to link to, that Bush has made almost no use of the power of clemency, despite the fact that we’re all supposed to forgive and forget everything he did before age 40 because, you know, God did. The article worked in some reference to the annual Thanksgiving pardon of turkeys, which reminded me that last week I was at the White House website and saw a link to a page where one could cast a vote in that pardon process. Which sounded like it meant they’d show you pictures of various turkeys and you could vote on which ones to save, a bit macabre, but turned out to be voting to name the pardoned ones. To spare you further suspense, I will just say that “Biscuits” and “Gravy” won, with 19,581 votes, crushing Adams & Jefferson, Salt & Pepper, and what must have been intended as a sop to the Puritans: Patience & Fortitude. I did not vote, because there was no place to write in Shock & Awe.

Gene Weingarten, naming either liberals’ fears about the next 4 years, or Dick Cheney’s secret checklist:

They think that we will begin invading small countries for frivolous reasons, such as that we want their sorghum. They think we will so inflame global hatreds that we will destabilize the world the way a baseball bat destabilizes a flamingo. They think we will become a corporate kleptocracy -- that big businesses will no longer even have to go through the formality of getting tax breaks because the federal treasury will simply mail them cash. That the portraits of the presidents on our money will be replaced by portraits of famous robber barons. That it will be illegal to be black. That Planned Parenthood clinics will be allowed to issue only chastity belts and clothes hangers. That the pledge of Allegiance will include the phrase ". . . under our Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, King of the Patriarchs, Master of the Apostles, Redeemer of Souls, Shepherd of the Only True Way, Vanquisher of Islam . . ." That, in terms of puritanical zeal, we will come to resemble 17th-century Salem, with ritual stoning of heretics or potty-mouths. That we will be forced to use words such as "thee" and "thine." That it will be illegal to have sex unless you are wearing pajamas.

Auditions for the Baghdad Rep production of Chorus Line are not going well.

Get rid of

Bush: “the will is strong, that the effort is united and the message is clear to Mr. Kim Jong Il: Get rid of your nuclear weapons programs”. See, this is why we need a president who can speak the English language, because someone is going to have to explain that by “get rid of” he didn’t mean sell them on Ebay.

The new delicacy in Europe: horse milk.

Somebody tried to sneak a provision into the appropriations bill giving committee the chairs of the appropriations committees of the House and Senate access to anyone’s income tax returns. Ted Stevens, chair of the Senate committee, said it was all a mystery to him how that happened.

Rep. Jerry Weller has married a member of the Guatemalan parliament, the daughter of former dictator and genocidal maniac Efrían Ríos Montt. See this previous post for a rant on the subject.

Partisan stalker

Tom DeLay, who once said he supported the impeachment of Clinton because Clinton held “the wrong worldview,” calls Chris Bell, who successfully brought an ethics charge against DeLay, a “partisan stalker”.

Little known DeLay fact: he was expelled by Baylor U. for drinking and carousing.

A WaPo editorial suggests that Bush & Condi should “Watch Venezuela,” which it accuses of moving in an authoritarian direction. Which may be true, but after Bush supported a coup attempt against the democratically elected president, his administration now has no moral standing to say anything about Venezuela. The editorial, which mentions the coup attempt but not the American support, says, “It is difficult for the United States to respond to Mr. Chavez, in part because he has adopted Mr. Castro’s practice of portraying the United States as an enemy bent on imperial intervention in Venezuela.” Yeah, can’t imagine what reason Castro and Chavez would have to think of the US that way.

The AMA is considering going after the medical license of Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher. Doctors aren’t supposed to participate in executions--do no harm, you know--and he signed a death warrant. As much as I’d like to side with the AMA on this one, its job is to police doctors’ ethics only when they’re acting as doctors.

Not just for Christmas

Israel apologizes for its army killing 3 Egyptian border policemen. You’d never know from some of the press descriptions--the NYT writes that “an Israeli tank crew fired on an Egyptian patrol near the border with Gaza”--that the Israelis fired into Egypt which is another country. Also, the Israeli tank being on that particular road was a violation of the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. Egypt is being very forgiving about the whole incident, which does legally constitute an act of war, including letting the Israelis investigate, although the deaths occurred, as I said, in Egypt.

Putin announces that Russia will soon build a totally awesome new nuclear weapon that none of the other cool kids have, only he can’t say what it is. He also totally has a girl friend, only you’ve never seen her because she goes to another school. Absent from the announcement: any hint as to why Russia needs new weapons, and against whom they’d be aimed.

Worthy charity of the week: http://www.adoptasniper.org/

Aware of information

On his way out the door, Colin Powell is turning up the heat on Iran, saying it’s working on delivery systems for nukes. Well, gosh, I’d sure hate for the smoking gun on that to be a mushroom cloud--I’ve heard that that’s bad. He says he has “seen intelligence” and is “aware of information that suggests” that Iran is up to mischief. Uh huh. Aware of information would be a step up for most Bushies, but it’s still not a ringing endorsement of the truth of the charge: “This is a date which may well live in infamy, if I have my facts straight.” “J’accuse, j’pense.”

A UN report says that opium production now employs 10% of Afghanistan’s population and is the “main engine of economic growth and the strongest bond among previously quarrelsome peoples”. Isn’t that sweet?

Divorce is legalized in Chile as of today. In the entire world, only Malta and the Philippines have no provision for divorce.

The Scottish Parliament legalizes public breastfeeding in any location where children are allowed, and makes trying to stop breastfeeding a crime. Plan your vacations accordingly. The Conservatives opposed the law, oddly enough using the phrase “nanny state.”

Molly Ivins has more on Tom DeLay and ethics rules. A must-read.

Canadian PM Paul Martin expels from the Liberal Party an MP, Carolyn Parrish, who appeared on a comedy show and stamped on an effigy of George Bush.

The world deserves better toilets

I’m still hoping for more amusing stories than this one to come out of the world toilet summit in Beijing. But it did have this quote:

“People are saying ‘We want good toilets!’ because toilets are a basic human right and that basic human right has been neglected,” said Jack Sim, founder of the World Toilet Organisation, a co-sponsor of the summit. “The world deserves better toilets.”

That did lead me to that organization’s website, which should be viewed if only for the logo. And one may “join us as a toilet ambassador today.” Don’t bother downloading the song, though.

Speaking of toilet ambassadors, the real problem with changing the rules to let DeLay stay in power after he’s indicted is the claim that the prosecution is politically motivated. That claim might be marginally acceptable for the R’s to make against a district attorney, even a judge, but not a grand jury composed of citizens.

Now if there were some way to torture blasphemers using origami....

Following the model of sorryeverybody.com, there’s a new one where Californians offer amends for electing Ahnuld. No, wait, it wants to amend... the constitution ... so he can become president. Dear lord no. Still no sign of him giving up his Austrian citizenship.

From the American Prospect website: “FUN WITH NAMES. You have to hand it to George W. Bush: He has a very sophisticated sense of humor. Naming a ‘Spellings’ (his former education policy advisor in Texas, Margaret Spellings) as education secretary? Next, perhaps someone named ‘Nucular’ to replace former energy secretary Spencer Abraham?”

The Netherlands’ government thinks it has the solution to the religious violence, burning of mosques, etc, that has escalated since the murder of Theo van Gogh: revive the blasphemy laws. The law against “scornful blasphemy” was enacted in 1932 for use against a communist paper which had suggested banning Christmas. Presumably, van Gogh would have been prosecuted for saying mean things about Islam, so there would have been no need to kill him.

In a sillier but less obnoxious response to religious violence, the Thai prime minister has called on Thais to fold 60 million origami birds, to be dropped from military planes on the country’s Muslim provinces. Said PM Thaksin, “The birds will also send the message that Thais of all races and religions love peace.” I did mention that they’d be dropped from military planes, didn’t I?

The strength, the grace and the decency of our country

Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state. It is to shudder. Although to give Shrub credit, Rice is not the least diplomatic person he could have found for the job, but Rumsfeld was busy, doing such a good job fucking up Iraq. Bush said today, “in Dr. Rice, the world will see the strength, the grace and the decency of our country.” Really, that’s what they’ll see?



Speaking of the world seeing the strength, grace & decency of our country, I can’t help noticing that we haven’t heard a word from Rummy on the subject of the prisoner execution in Fallujah. Or from Bush. Or from anyone with a familiar name. That incident badly needs a name, to help ensure it doesn’t get swept under the rug. Pending somebody offering a better name, I suggest the alliterative Murder in the Mosque, with apologies to T.S. Eliot. Also, we still haven’t heard from any US member of Congress willing to go on record against the summary execution of wounded prisoners. There was a time when such a shooting bothered people just a little.

Cultural sensitivity

The military responds to the shooting of that unarmed wounded prisoner in Fallujah by taking a firm stance in favor of moral relativism. The Times says, “Pentagon officials quickly let it be known that in a separate incident the same day a Marine was killed and five were wounded by a dead body that was booby-trapped.” So that’s ok then. In fact, many of the Marines interviewed by various press people defend the killing (for example), and none express outrage of even the mildest sort.

The marine commander in Fallujah says, “The facts of this case will be thoroughly pursued to make an informed decision and to protect the rights of all persons involved.” All persons? I can’t wait to see how they protect the rights of the guy who was shot to death.

AP has a story, “Iraqis Remove Corpses under U.S. Oversight,” implying great cultural sensitivity on the part of the Marines for using Muslims to ensure the burial of the dead of Fallujah according to Muslim burial practices. Did I mention the booby-trapped corpses?

AP also brings us this stunner: “Shooting of Iraqi in Mosque Angers Muslims.”

Speaking of cultural sensitivity:

A Nigerian court has sentenced a man to death by hanging for murdering his wife so that witch-doctors could use her organs to bring him riches. Robert Ibrahim Chilaka, 42, killed Cecilia, 25, and took her body parts to the ritualists who promised him one million naira (£4,060) but fled without paying him. (AFP)

Speaking of cultural sensitivity (in as much as campaign corruption is part of Republican culture) House Republicans will tomorrow change their rules so that Tom DeLay can remain Majority Leader when he is indicted for campaign finance violations.

Settlers in Gaza will be richly compensated when/if they are ever removed. They can use the money to move to... the West Bank.

Sec of Ed. Rod Paige resigned, according to his spokesmodel, to “devote attention to a personal project”--remodeling his home.

Google special

I wasn’t sure if I would put up a link to the “unedited footage of marine shooting unarmed Iraqi,” to quote the Google search that led many disappointed punters to this site today, but I’ve seen the video in its bowdlerized (see, I said that word would come up again) form several times now, on the News Hour, BBC, etc, and the act of sanitization annoys me a little more each time, even though I have no desire to watch it. So I just hope you’re all here for the “right” reasons, and here’s the link.

I’m not sure it is in the nature of our American friends at the moment to return favours systematically

US troops are in the process of sealing off Mosul.

Bush spoke to Muslim leaders at an Iftar dinner to celebrate the end of Ramadan: “We will always protect the most basic human freedom, the freedom to worship the almighty God without any fear.” He was then immediately struck by lightning.

Tony Blair: “It is not a sensible or intelligent response for us in Europe to ridicule American arguments and parody their political leadership.” That’s just for people in Europe, right? Because if I couldn’t parody American political leadership, life would not be worth living.

In that speech, Blair pathetically explained to Europeans that Britain was a bridge between the US and Europe, and implied that Bush’s very crassness made him valuable to the Europeans: as a lightning rod for terrorism: “If America were to pull up the drawbridge, retreat from its obligations and alliances abroad, the terrorists would attack the rest of us.”

Jacques Chirac responded by pointing out that Blair has gotten nothing out of his alliance with the US: “I’m not sure it is in the nature of our American friends at the moment to return favours systematically.” Yeah, Jacko, but revenge for that sort of comment is something we still do pretty darned systematically, so unless you want a rerun of the whole “freedom fries” thing, watch it.



Oh dear lord, four more years of being his butt monkey.

“He’s fucking faking he’s dead. He faking he’s fucking dead.”

Cheery thought of the day: since 4 years of fronting policies he wasn’t allowed to help formulate has left him with no credibility, Colin Powell has a choice: either remain “loyal” and watch his memoirs go straight to the remainder bin, or say what he really thinks about Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz etc.

Powell will be replaced as chief diplomat by the least diplomatic person in the White House. Condi grew up in the South and has convinced herself that she had to be twice as good as everyone else to succeed (what does that say about everyone else?). In that as in so much else, she is deeply delusional. Should fit right in.

Expect State to be ideologically purged, just like the CIA.

Bhutan will ban tobacco sales next month.

A 93-year-old Englishwoman named Dorothy Bland has blown up her house in Newcastle. “I was only making a cup of tea,” Ms. Bland said. I’m going to hell for finding that story amusing.



The Hungarian parliament has turned down the government’s request to extend the deployment of its (non-combat) troops in Iraq another 3 months.

A Marine kills a wounded, unarmed prisoner. In a mosque. On camera. “He’s fucking faking he’s dead. He faking he’s fucking dead,” one Marine says (and try saying that five times fast), and then he or another Marine shoots him. “He’s dead now.”

As I understand this, a day or two before, one unit captured 5 wounded insurgents, and then just left them in a mosque, making no attempt to get them treated. A day later another unit came back (not to get the wounded, but because they thought the mosque had been re-occupied. By that time, 1 was dead and 3 were close, and the incident ensued. I haven’t seen the footage yet, but I gather it’s widely available, and widely censored to preserve our delicate sensibilities.

The haircut of President Ion Iliescu is not in the public interest

There is only one known German survivor of World War I.

With elections coming up in Romania, the opposition has formally protested a tv report on President Iliescu, who will be running for a senate seat, getting a haircut. “The alliance considers that the haircut of President Ion Iliescu is not in the public interest,” says the Truth and Justice Alliance.

The Massacre of Fallujah involved a number of war crimes, from the shutting off of water to the refusal to let male inhabitants flee to the shooting of dogs (which may not technically constitute a war crime, but isn’t very nice). Now, the Iraqi Red Crescent is being denied access to the city, on the grounds that the US military can provide relief. The only reason for this is to force every inhabitant to be seen by the Americans, which is to make humanitarian assistance a subordinate, integrated part of the counter-insurgent operation (with a little ritual humiliation thrown in--hey, Bob Hope’s dead, they have to get their entertainment somewhere). A Col. Shupp of the Marines insisted he knew of no civilians in Fallujah, adding “We are on the radio telling them how to come out and how to come up to coalition forces.” Radio? The electricity was cut days ago.

So where’s the outrage? Is there a single Democratic politician complaining about the needless deaths of Fallujan children from diarrhoea, or any of the rest of it? I said days ago that Fallujah would enter the ranks of places whose names are transferred from places to events, like Dresden. Now I think it will be ignored and quickly forgotten, a little speedbump to roll right over, just like...

(That is indeed a dead body everybody’s just ignoring like a fart in church.)

We still haven’t seen a figure for how many of the Iraqi soldiers who were supposed to participate in Operation Dawn of the Dead actually showed up. They did no actual fighting, just searched a few buildings the Americans had already cleared, and stood around looking all Coalition-of-the-Willingy for the cameras. Once again, they have proven that if the US pulled its troops out tomorrow, Allawi would be swept away within days.

At least the Iraqi soldiers, I assume, didn’t bring their dolls, excuse me, “action figures.”

What, not even his deep-fried Mars bar?

The Bible, which has already been translated into Cockney rhyming slang and Yorkshire dialects, will soon make it into Scots. Here’s the 10th commandment: “Ye maunna covet yer neibour’s hoose; ye maunna covet yer neibour’s wife, nor his sairvant chiel, nor his sairvant lass, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor onything that is yer neibour’s.”

Ah, Republican values! Linda Schrenko, the first woman elected to a statewide office (school superintendent, of the creationist/prayer-in-school type) in the backward state of Georgia in 1994, is being indicted for misappropriation of funds. She stole money intended to buy computer services for deaf children to pay for her cosmetic surgery when she ran for governor.

So Bush is ordering an ideological purge of the CIA. Just when I thought it was impossible for the Bushies to disappoint me, there they go again. I had hoped for the sake of the country that the absolute refusal to admit mistakes was just an electioneering stance, and they would quietly work to correct the conditions that led them to get it consistently wrong on WMDs, yellowcake, being greeted as liberators, etc etc. But no, they really don’t want to be told uncomfortable truths. Not only are they unwilling to learn from their mistakes (or incapable of doing so), but Junior is also unwilling to learn from his father, who was quite upset that Jimmy Carter didn’t keep him on as director of central intelligence. That post was traditionally supposed to be non-partisan, like the FBI director, because intelligence is not supposed to be politicized. So Richard Helms, appointed DCI by Johnson, didn’t give Nixon a letter of resignation in 1969.

Stop and think about what sort of people would prefer not to have objective analysis (not that the CIA was truly objective, but on the big issues of the last few years it’s been right much of the time): the answer I come up with is people who don’t believe in the existence of objective facts separate from ideology.

No casualties

Correction: it wasn’t the US that said the fighting in Fallujah was over, it was the Iraqis. The Americans say that there are still pockets of resistance, adding “you know, like pockets in the pants of a really fat guy, like Fallujah-sized pockets.”

And “Comical” Allawi says that there have been “no casualties among civilians” in Fallujah. None. For that single statement, that outrageous denial of the human cost of a massive assault on a city, he deserves to be driven out of public life. The sort of person who could utter a lie like that does not care two shits for the people of Iraq.

Some mission. Some mop.

The US is declaring mission accomplished in Fallujah except for the, you know, mopping up.

AP reports that the GAO found that for some of the newly “trained” Iraqi troops, their only “training” consisted of putting on the uniform.

Bush’s Saturday radio address, a speech so Panglossian as to give a bad name to Panglossian speeches, talks of 115,000 “trained and equipped Iraqi soldiers, police officers and other security personnel ... serving their country”. It’s that “other” you have to wonder about.

Also, remember the phrasing Shrub used in the 2003 State of the Union address, “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa” and how Condi Rice would claim that Shrub’s clearly false statement was “accurate” because of the attribution to British intelligence? Well, today he said, “An Iraqi general has described hostage slaughter houses, where terrorists have killed innocent victims and proudly recorded their barbaric crimes.” My bullshit detector just went off.

I don’t think any press source has asked this question: those quarter-million Fallujans who supposedly evacuated the city before the Massacre of Fallujah began--where did they all go?

The London Sunday Times has seen records of a Gulfstream executive-type jet hired by the CIA & Pentagon to fly prisoners to countries that will torture them, including Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Syria and Uzbekistan. Over 300 flights. They also have a 737.

Let the bowdlerization begin

Senate Democrats seem likely not to oppose Alberto Gonzales’s nomination, because setting the legal groundwork for Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib is nowhere near as significant as, for example, hiring an illegal immigrant as a nanny. Remember Zoe Baird? Remember Kimba Wood? If not, go have a look, and remember the standards nominees of a Democratic president were expected to meet. At the time, I thought that Baird had disqualified herself from being attorney general (Wood was another matter), but Nannygate somehow doesn’t compare to the disregard for the rule of law Gonzales has demonstrated.

The LA Times has a good editorial on the Saving Private Ryan incident, which, like the legal work of Mr. Gonzales, shows the dangers when the predictable application of the rule of law is replaced by the whim of the executive:

the FCC’s refusal to provide advance guarantees to affiliates that it wouldn’t take action if they aired “Saving Private Ryan” makes it look as if the commission’s main priority is to tailor its response to whatever level of pressure it feels from self-appointed morality guardians.

A more sinister interpretation (and the LA Times may be right that it’s just weak-minded opportunism) would be that maintaining ambiguity about what standards it would apply, and applying them unevenly, induces self-censorship, as we just saw happen, which isn’t the PR problem that overt censorship would be, but gets the job of bowdlerization done at least as well. (If you don’t know the word bowdlerization, look it up, because I guarantee you will see it again as the puritans settle into their work with the special sort of glee seen only in those who are improving everyone else’s morals, whether they like it or not.