Not a nation of quitters

Leftist FARC rebels in Colombia have rejected the government’s deal/threat that if they didn’t release 63 hostages, including 3 US “contractors,” their leader would be extradited to the US. FARC denounces this as blackmail, and it’s always so good to hear kidnappers taking the moral high ground, isn’t it?

Speaking of the moral high ground, Israeli settlers in Gaza have taken to wearing Stars of David, orange rather than yellow, in protest at the possibility that they might some day be forced out of the land they stole.

Blair went to Iraq today, unexpectedly, and enunciated the strongest reason for not leaving Iraq (British troops not leaving Iraq, obviously; Tony himself left Iraq almost immediately): “Whatever people feel about the conflict, we British are not a nation of quitters.”


Trying just a little too hard.



I can fly!



Here I just find the plastic forks amusing for some reason.

The pride is back

Putin, visiting Schleswig, Germany, tells protesters against the war in Chechnya, “There has been no more war in Chechnya for three years. It is over. You can go home. Merry Christmas.”

Hey Putin, shouldn’t that be happy holid... ah, fuck it.

Actually, a word of compromise to the Christers: you can say Merry Christmas all you like, provided you only do it on fucking Christmas itself. 24 hours, that’s it. I’ll just hide under the blankets that day.

Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, possessor of the most WASPy name in all Christendom, puts a positive spin on the bombing of the US base in Mosul, in which at least 24 US & Iraqi soldiers, as well as contractors, were killed: “In the chaos that followed that attack, there was no differentiation by nationality; whether one wore a uniform or civilian clothes, they were all brothers-in-arms taking care of one another. And I think that’s something that all Americans and, indeed, all Iraqis can be very proud of.”

Evidently the British Parliament only has 93 Luddites

The 9th Circuit upholds a Clinton-era law criminalizing people giving funds to “terrorist” organizations. The Court ruled that no one can challenge the State Dept decision to list an organization as terrorist, a decision that in recent years has often been made as a gift to America’s good liberal friends like Putin, or as part of a quid pro quo.

I had forgotten that Germany was allowing Jews to immigrate from the former Soviet Union--not Germans, so this is a penance thing, and really the least they could do. This year more Jews went there than to Israel. But now after 15 years Germany has decided to scale back the program and only admit those who know German, are under 45 and self-supporting. So was it necessary for the Daily Telegraph to report this under the chilling headline, “Jews to Face New Rules in Germany”?

Bark mitzvah.

The new British home secretary, Charles Clarke, described by the Times parliamentary sketch writer as “arrogance on legs,” calls opponents of compulsory ID cards “Luddites.” Yes, they oppose ID cards because they are against the mechanization of cotton spinning. Clarke added that it would make renting videos easier, which is probably why Parliament passed the bill 385 to 93.

The Bill Clinton Presidential Library is negotiating a joint tourist package with Graceland. Plan your vacations accordingly. You know, that could be an entirely different experience just depending on which one you went to first.

Speaking of vacations, a French magistrate went to the Conference of European General Prosecutors in Germany, where he delivered an hour-long speech on ethics, and then stole a German prosecutor’s credit card and used it in a brothel.

At today’s Ukrainian presidential debates, square-headed Mr. Y told icky-faced Mr. Y, “If you think you can win and be president of all of Ukraine, you are deeply mistaken. You will be president of part of Ukraine. I am not struggling for power; I am struggling against bloodshed.” Damn self-sacrificing of ya, square-headed Mr. Y!

It’s in our long-term interest that we succeed: I watch Chimpy’s press conference so you don’t have to

Transcript.

GeeDubya started off with a lie, “Now I’ll be glad to answer some questions,” and just continued lying from there.

On Kerik, “We -- we’ve vetted a lot of people in this administration, and we -- we vetted people in the first term. We’re vetting people in the second term. And I’ve got great confidence in our vetting process.” It just sounds so dirty when he says it.

Asked who he’d pick as national intelligence director: “I’m going to find somebody who knows something about intelligence.” Sorta like Diogenes. Which raises the question how Shrub, of all people, would recognize somebody who knows something about intelligence.

Rummy shouldn’t be fired because he provides “comfort and solace” to the soldiers who his policies put in Walter Reed in the first place. And I’m guessing he even signs their casts with an autosigner. Shrub believes Rummy’s job is complex: “It’s complex in times of peace. And it’s complex even more so in times of war.”

“We have a vital interest in the success of a free Iraq. You see, free societies do not export terror.” Afghanistan is free now, according to Shrub, I believe, and it exports what again?

I like the idea that asking him to speak in other than vague generalities about Social Security is a trick question, trying to get him to “negotiate with myself in public, to get me to negotiate with myself in public, to say, you know, ‘What’s this mean, Mr. President, what’s that mean?’” Yeah, heaven for-fucking-fend anyone ask him what he means. He won’t negotiate with himself but he will negotiate with Congresscritters, he said. Implicit in this answer is that the American people have no part in these decisions, which will be made behind closed doors and presented to them as a fait accompli.

Reporters really have to stop with the multiple-part questions, which Bush uses to answer neither. One asked a two-parter about Social Security, the first part being something fairly general about how he could fix it without raising taxes or cutting benefits, and the second part a good specific one about how he defines people “near retirement” whose benefits he’s promised to preserve. Shrub whittered on for a bit, but given the opportunity to follow up, the reporter didn’t press him on the specific one. Better to have asked only that one, and followed up on it.

And I defy anyone to find any meaning in this:

Now the benefits, as far as I’m concerned, of the personal savings account is, one, it encourages an ownership society. One of the philosophies of this government is if you own something, it is -- it makes the country a better -- the more people who own something, the country’s better off. You have a stake in the future of the country if you own something.

On Iraq, Americans watching tv see thousands--he quickly backtracked to hundreds--of innocent Iraqis getting killed, many of them not by indiscriminate US bombing, but they don’t see small businesses starting.

About Guantanamo hurting America’s reputation, he pointed to the court decisions requiring hearings as proving that America is “a nation of laws,” without saying that those decisions overturned his policy of not being a nation of laws. But there’s a “dilemma”: “And I want to make sure before they’re released that they don’t come back to -- (laughs) -- kill again.” Amputation, I’m guessing.

Donating cigarettes to monks is a sin

Time magazine chooses Bush as man of the year for “sticking to his guns (literally and figuratively)”. I’m pretty sure that’s a metaphor having something to do with masturbation.

In his interview with Time, Bush as ever chooses his word-thingies with the utmost care, saying “we’ve got a shot” for peace in the Middle East. I’m pretty sure this gun reference is not a metaphor.

The pope warns against getting caught up in the materialism of Christmas, speaking from a window in his big honking palace.

Three election workers were killed in Iraq. Presumably someone recognized their feet. A spokesmodel for the electoral commission responds: “Every day the people are dying, okay. If there are no elections, are they going to stop? No, so we have to make it.” I’m pretty sure he was quoting the preamble to the US Constitution or Magna Charta or something.

Some of the electoral lists for the Iraqi elections: the Assembly for the Grandchildren of the Twentieth Revolution, the Niche Martyr Foundation for Islamic Notification, the Movement of Farmers and Oppressed Peoples of Kurdistan. The London Times observes that some of them haven’t gotten the whole campaigning thing down yet:

Asked by The Times about his manifesto, the leader of one small group, The Justice and Democratic Advancement Party, refused to divulge any information. “There are some people who want to steal our programme and I can’t give this to anybody,” he said.

Saddam Hussein’s lawyer passes on a message that Iraqis should boycott the elections. You’d think Saddam would support elections, since the last ones held in Iraq went in his favor 11,445,638 to 0, with a 100% turnout.

Speaking of elections, in Ukraine Yanukovych’s wife has been saying that Yushchenko’s supporters have become addicted to “narcotic-injected oranges” passed out to them.

I’ve said it before: the English will bet on anything. That said, the current odds on there being a white Christmas have been cut to 11:4 for London, so get your bets in.

Thailand will add a new warning to cigarette packages: “Donating cigarettes to monks is a sin.”

You know what they say: big feet, big election

Iraqi judges question “Chemical” Ali. Possibly about the Periodic Table.

Pinochet has a really conveniently timed “stroke.”

Telling detail: “Iraqi television shows only the feet of election officials rather than their faces, because they are terrified of their identity being revealed.”

The American Muslims have stripes

Yeah I’ve seen the Cornell study (pdf file) about attitudes to Muslims, and I’d be a lot more worried if I trusted the methodology more. But I don’t, so I’d advise the leftyblogosphere (I just made that up) to chill.

That said, I’d like to point to the part where 27% think that Muslim-Americans should be required to register and ask, what do those people think Muslims are? If this were a legal requirement, it would presumably be enforced by a punishment, so you’d have to prove that a non-registrant believed that there was no god but Allah and that Mohammed was his prophet etc etc etc. What’s worrying is that the 27% evidently do not think of Islam as a religion, a system of beliefs, but rather believe that there is something intrinsic and immutable about a person being “Muslim,” something which is visible, detectable by the authorities, like the sketches of Jews the priest shows the boyhood version of Woody Allen’s character in “Love and Death”: “Do they all have horns?” “No, those are Russian Jews; the German Jews have stripes.” Imagine the debates we could have if we passed the Compulsory Registration of Muslims Act of 2005: do we use the Nazi standards to determine who is a Muslim or the Old South’s “one drop” rule, do we subject people we suspect are “passing” to a test involving the consumption of pork products?

Strong leadership

In Britain, the Law Lords, the highest judicial body, ruled 8-1 that the law allowing indefinite detention of terrorism suspects violates their civil rights. No duh. The ruling is not binding, given parliamentary supremacy, so those locked up without trial under the law (12 of them) will not be released, although the British gov is thinking about reducing the standard of evidence, or making up new crimes, like “acts preparatory to terrorism” that these people could be tried for. Foreign Minister Jack Straw calls the decision “strident” and “simply wrong” and throws away Britain’s moral right to criticize the human rights record of any other country by adding, “On this dilemma of how to balance liberty and order, the most important liberty is the right to life. If that liberty is taken away by the terrorists, then we have not met our prime obligation as a government.”

And in the US, a federal district judge ruled that American courts have jurisdiction when the US has convinced foreign governments, in this case Saudi Arabia, to lock up Americans in their own prisons and torture them for information. The US government, in arguing the case, did not deny that it had done that, just that the legal system had no sway in such cases, or, in the words of the judge, “the United States is, in effect, arguing for nothing less than the unreviewable powers to separate an American citizen from the most fundamental of his constitutional rights merely by choosing where he will be detained or who will detain him.”

The US State Dept has designated al-Manar television, the Lebanese Hezbollah station France just banned, a terrorist organization. That’s right, a tv station = a terrorist organization. Insert obvious Fox News or Lifetime joke here. The real-life consequences of this designation is that any foreigner supporting it or associated with it can be banned from the US. The State Dept is using the word “incitement” to describe al-Manar’s nefarious, um, programming.

Hitler was a tax dodger. The bastard!

Earlier this month, I mentioned that Bush, whenever he meets a foreign leader, goes out of his way to describe him or her as a “strong leader.” He did the same with Berlusconi this week. But here’s a picture of “Comical” Allawi opening the election campaign with a bunch of candidates on the “Iraqi List,” keffiyah guys on the left, ill-fitting business suits and right-hand-holding-left-wrist guys on the right, with a big brotherish picture of Allawi behind them and the words “strong leadership” in Arabic.

I have directed that in the future I sign each letter

SCHIZOPHRENIC MUCH? Secretary of War Rumsfeld, caught using an autosigner in letters to the families of troops killed in Iraq, says “I have directed that in the future I sign each letter.” So he’s issued a directive to his right hand. But did he sign that directive personally, and wouldn’t his right hand feel as insulted as the families did not to receive a personally signed directive? Rummy’s statement adds, “I wrote and approved the now more than 1000 letters”. So he (or possibly just his right hand) wrote the letters and then he got his own approval for what he (or possibly just his right hand) had written. Get help, Rummy.



This is the banner the White House website has been using on every economic summit story, and it’s been driving me crazy. Does anyone have the faintest idea what’s supposed to be going on in the second image?

Challanges

How reassuring and, yet, not: article on the Pentagon website: “All Trucks in Iraq Have Some Form of Armor.” Some form.

The same article says that convoys are now called “combat logistics patrols.” We got us a combat logistics patrol, rocking through the night...

Speaking of jargon, I was evidently a little late in noticing the new practice of the mentally “challanged” one


calling Social Security an “unfunded liability.” Shrub of course is the biggest unfunded liability there is.

At the economic conference, Bush explained what he thinks about when he masturbates: “And I know that a million, a billion, a trillion sort of gets lost on the average listener, so I always like to explain that if you're looking at a trillion dollars, just imagine spending a dollar every second, and it would take you 32,000 years to spend a trillion dollars.”

The world’s tallest building, which will open in Taipei next year, will have the fastest elevator, capable of taking people to the top in 37 seconds.

Not connected to any decisions about operational capability

Cranky old man Zell Miller has been hired by Fox, despite the fact that Grandpa Simpson already works for the network. Just seems redundant, really.

A lawsuit has been filed in Germany against Secretary of War Rumsfeld over the torture of Iraqi prisoners. Pentagon spokesmodel Larry DiRita--last seen here saying he didn’t know if tasering prisoners was torture or not--called the lawsuit “frivolous.” Yeah, those frivolous Germans, at their frivolity again. He threatens Germany with dire consequences if the lawsuits “were ever to see the light of day,” which is a fairly insulting way to speak about the independent judicial system of a sovereign nation, made even more insulting when it comes from a talking head like DiRita instead of a policy player--like sending your secretary to tell your girlfriend you’re breaking up with her.

DiRita also made this comment today about the failure of the latest Star Wars test: “the test was not connected to any decisions about operational capability.” Sure, cuz who cares if it actually works.

Jargon alert: talking about Social Security today, Bush several times referred to the program as “unfunded.” I predict we’ll be hearing that word a lot.

Today a report was released demonstrating that students at charter schools don’t do any better than those in regular public schools (and worse at lower income levels). Outgoing Secretary of Education Rod Paige says the study “should not be used as a red flag by those with an agenda to stop the charter school movement in its tracks”. Sure, cuz who cares if they actually work. Paige added that charter schools serve students “left behind years ago” by regular schools, which is precisely what the study disproves. What I like is that on the very same day this report came out, it was reported that Jenna Bush would teach at a charter school, despite having no qualifications beyond a BA in English.

Freedom is on the march

The woman who killed her baby by cutting off her arms cites the bit in the bible about if thy right hand offend thee etc. The LA Times felt some weird journalistic obligation to call a theology teacher to find out if this was a correct reading of the passage.

It isn’t.

Chimpy presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to George Tenet, Tommy Franks and Paul Bremer. No wonder “they” hate us for our freedom. The Presidential Medal of Freedom is good for one medium serving of Freedom Fries in the White House commissary.

And I still think “Kerik” sounds like a Klingon’s name

Bush handed the D’s a powerful weapon, if they have the street smarts to use it: Bernard Kerik. Scottie McClellan said today, “Commissioner Kerik withdrew his name. The matter is closed, and now we’re moving forward on another nominee.” He wishes. The matter is not closed, because the nomination was an intelligence failure of epic proportions, given how many black marks and red flags (I’m going with color-related metaphors as an homage to Tom Ridge) Kerik had against him, including ones like the affairs and the abandoned illegitimate child, which don’t affect his ability to do the job or matter to me or probably you, but which should have been embarrassing to Bush after all the talk during the election about the sacred institution of marriage.

And as an intelligence failure, that nomination negates Bush’s claim to have his other nominees go through on the nod. Every time the R’s talk about going to a “nuclear option” to prevent filibusters and every time they talk about D “obstructionism,” the D’s need to respond “Kerik Kerik Kerik,” pointing to the object lesson, if another one was needed, why Shrub’s judgment of people doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt.

Slither slither slither slither went the tongue

THIS BUSINESS WE CALL SHOW TRIAL: “Comical” Allawi has announced that the war crimes trials of Baathist officials--or as he tellingly phrased it the “symbols of the former regime”--will begin next week, although no one else thinks they’re anywhere near being able to proceed. Interesting to see what actually happens next week, if anything.

There’s an odd war of words going on over Turkey’s application to join the EU. A couple of days ago the Turkish PM threatened that there would be an escalation of Islamicist terrorism unless the Europeans proved they weren’t just a Christian club. Today, the French foreign minister said that Turkey must acknowledge the 1915 genocide of Armenians (Christians) before entry, and Turkey said hell no, because there was no genocide.

France showed its own approach to creating religious harmony through censorship (actually, much the same approach as that of Turkey, which is also hostile to Islamic headscarves) by banning a Lebanese/Hezbollah satellite cable channel for antisemitism. The station had claimed Jews were spreading AIDS to Arabs and that sort of thing, but was also shut down for accusing Israel of crimes against humanity; the French FCC-equivalent pedantically said that this statement was not allowable because Israel had never been convicted of crimes against humanity by an international judicial body.

Tom Wolfe wins the annual bad sex in writing award. I remember a year or two ago, it was won by an Indian writer, whose publishers actually flew him in to accept the award. Wolfe does not plan to show up. Excerpt:

Hoyt began moving his lips as if he were trying to suck the ice cream off the top of a cone without using his teeth. She tried to make her lips move in sync with his. The next thing she knew, Hoyt had put his hand sort of under her thigh and hoisted her leg up over his thigh. What was she to do? Was this the point she should say, "Stop!"? No, she shouldn't put it that way. It would be much cooler to say, "No, Hoyt," in an even voice, the way you would talk to a dog that insists on begging at the table.

Slither slither slither slither went the tongue, but the hand that was what she tried to concentrate on, the hand, since it has the entire terrain of her torso to explore and not just the otorhinolaryngological caverns - oh God, it was not just at the border where the flesh of the breast joins the pectoral sheath of the chest - no, the hand was cupping her entire right - Now! She must say "No, Hoyt" and talk to him like a dog. . .

. . . the fingers went under the elastic of the panties moan moan moan moan moan went Hoyt as he slithered slithered slithered slithered and caress caress caress caress went the fingers until they must be only eighths of inches from the border of her public hair - what's that! - Her panties were so wet down. . . there - the fingers had definitely reached the outer stand of the field of pubic hair and would soon plunge into the wet mess that was waiting right. . . there-there”

“Otorhinolaryngological” means ear, nose & throat.

The most relentless persecution this country has ever seen against one person

London Times headline: “13 Killed in Car Bomb on Saddam Anniversary.” I thought the first anniversary was paper.

Spanish PM Aznar lost the last election in part because he lied when he blamed the Madrid train bombings on ETA. And before leaving office he paid a computer company €12,000 to make sure the government’s computer records related to the bombings were completely wiped.

Speaking of cover-ups, after Human Rights Watch announced that it knew of 3 prisoners who had died in American custody in Afghanistan that had never been publicly announced, the Pentagon admitted to 2 of them. My favorite is the Afghan soldier they mistakenly captured and then mistakenly murdered.

Speaking of prisoners being disappeared, Pinochet was indicted today, but not sent to prison while awaiting trial for the murders/disappearances of 10 human beings, just given house arrest, and even that order didn’t last out the day. One of Pinochet’s lawyers denounced the proceedings as “no more than a new episode of the most relentless persecution this country has ever seen against one person.” Oh, the injustice of it all.

And Pinochet’s idiot son was also sentenced today, 1½ years for receiving stolen property (a car), and illegal possession of a gun.


Evil, but such a snappy dresser

Captain, the pop culture metaphor cannae take much more of this!

I was a day premature in announcing the anniversary of Saddam’s capture, one of the pitfalls of reading tomorrow’s British papers today. I just looked back at my own post written after the success of “Operation Red Dawn.” I wrote, “The Resistance will have to find something better to fight for, assuming that just fighting against the American occupation isn’t enough.” Evidently it is enough. And I asked if Iraqis would begin taking hostages and demanding Hussein’s release. It’s interesting that that hasn’t happened, despite the many, many western hostages taken since that date.

The Department of Homeland Security, which was created so that intelligence would be better coordinated, had nominated as its head Bernie Kerik, without anyone being aware that he had violated immigration and Social Security laws, had an arrest warrant sworn out against him, and numerous red flags related to ethics and competency.

Remember when they said that irony was dead after 9/11?

Also, his name sounds like a Klingon’s.

That was intended as a joke, but it occurs to me that aside from all the nanny problems and whatnot, there was a more fundamental problem with Kerik: Bush chose a Klingon to fill a job that required a Vulcan. Bush always chooses Klingons for jobs that require Vulcans.

He sounded white on the phone

Bush has had his physical, and has gained some weight. Too many donuts, he says. Is it wrong of me to think that his problem is actually too few pretzels?

Today was the one year anniversary of the capture of Saddam Hussein, which, as we were told it would at the time, has ended the insurgency and brought about a new era of peace, prosperity and cute puppy dogs.

821 American soldiers have died in that period.

From the Sunday Times (London):

Members of the far-right British National party walked out of their own Christmas party after organisers accidentally hired a black DJ. “We had to be careful what we said when we did the raffle so we didn’t offend the guy,” said BNP official Bob Garner. The party, at a London hotel, was organised by the party central London branch. “He sounded white on the phone,” said Garner.

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.”