You don’t have a relationship, George, you are a stalker

Headline of the day, “I’m Sorry for Wearing Nazi Swastika, Says Prince Harry.” He was attending a “colonial and native”-themed party. Prince William went as a lion, which I assume is his idea of a native.

A London Times article on the Iraqi police:

Most policemen conceal the nature of their work even from their neighbours. They hide their faces behind ski masks or head scarves, and when they carry Kalashnikovs and man roadblocks it is difficult to tell them from guerrillas.

Sometimes the guerrillas are in uniform and the police in civvies: you only know which is which when they wave you through without kidnapping you. Last week a Times translator was stopped and searched at a guerrilla checkpoint only 100 yards from the main police headquarters in Baghdad.

Whoops, an even better headline, from the Daily Telegraph: “Thatcher Escapes Jail.” Sadly, it’s not about Margaret Thatcher going over the wall (oh man, I’m gonna have the Great Escape theme in my head the rest of the day now), but her idiot son Mark taking a plea bargain in South Africa for his role in financing the “time-share” coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea. He’s getting away with a fine.

Oh, wait, it’s just gonna be one of those days. Also from the Telegraph: “Village Celebrates its Past with £10,000 Statue of Dinosaur Droppings.”

The Russian Duma is working on a law to deny visas to people showing “disrespect” for Russia or harming its values, whatever those might be.

Bush, in an interview with the Moonie Washington Times, says, “I don’t see... how you can be president without a relationship with the Lord.”

Doing “what we see fit to maintain security”

The US military has shot more Iraqi children, fatally in the case of a 13-year old girl, and, as with those other “possibly innocent lives” three days ago, immediately started casting aspersions on the victims: spokesmodel Major Neal O’Brien said, “This is an absolute tragedy. We do not know at this time what the children were doing in the area.” They live there, you moron, what were the American soldiers doing in the area? Oh yeah, shooting at anything that moved.

Posters issued in Anbar province of Iraq, by the Secret Republican Army, which CBS describes as “previously unknown”--oh, they’re good--say that voters in Wasit--which is next to Whatchamacallit--will be shot by 32 snipers. The governor of the province, who I assume plans to vote absentee, says, “We do not care about such statements” and that the government will do “what we see fit to maintain security.” Very reassuring.

Speaking of lame elections, Britain is gearing up for its next one, with these posters, masterpieces of the propagandistic arts:

I assume I’m right

Bush has named Michael Chertoff to head Heimat Security. He says that after 9/11, “He understood immediately that the strategy in the war on terror is to prevent attacks before they occur.” Because preventing attacks after they occur is, you know, hard work.


Must...resist...urge...to rub the bald guy’s head.


Bush gave an interview to the Wall St Journal, flanked by “senior aides,” because god knows he can’t be trusted on his own. He said, “I understand there are many who say, ‘Bush is wrong.’ I assume I’m right.” And you know what they say about people who assume...

Wherein I coin the phrase “one-sodomy rule”

A WaPo editorial notes that the Team Chimpy is planning to stick DC with the huge costs of security for the inaugural, a break with previous practice. DC will be allowed to use homeland security funds for this instead of for, say, homeland security, as clear an admission as you’d like that homeland security funding (I just used the phrase homeland security three times in a row without gagging, a sure sign of desensitization--what will we be accepting as normal in 2009?) is nothing but pork.

Speaking of abnormal, I just went to the supermarket, and why are all the oranges bigger than the grapefruit? When did that happen? I’m pretty sure this is one of the signs of the Apocalypse.

Speaking of...well no, I won’t go there.... The Supreme Court refused today to hear challenges to Florida’s ban on gay adoption (which only Florida has, by the way). The 1977 law says: “No person eligible to adopt under this statute may adopt if that person is a homosexual.” This raises questions similar to those I asked about Muslims last month, when a poll showed 27% of Americans thought they should be required to register, namely, who gets to define “homosexual.” This is a law--Stat. § 63.042(3)--so you’d think it would include a legal definition of “a homosexual,” but it doesn’t. Indeed, the Christian evangelical types like Anita Bryant who got this law passed are the ones who insist that homosexuality is a “lifestyle” rather than an innate sexual identity (I’ve seen a similar argument from the other end, so to speak, of the spectrum, by Gore Vidal, who insists that there are no homosexuals, just homosexual acts). If a would-be adoptive parent denies being homosexual, how do the state and courts determine otherwise, by what standard? Measure blood flow to their genitals when they’re exposed to pictures of Brad Pitt? Do they have to fuck someone of the opposite sex in open court--and none of that fancy sex like we hear they have up north either. What about “ex-gays”? What about bisexuals? Is it ok if you just experimented in college--Lesbians until Graduation (LUGs) they called it at my college--or got really drunk this one time (at least that’s what you tell everyone), or is there a one-sodomy rule?

This is what happens when the state intrudes into people’s personal lives.

“I look forward to welcoming him here to Washington if he chooses to come here”

Today is the 3rd anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo for business as a gulag. I just looked it up: the traditional third anniversary gift is leather. Oh dear.

Mahmoud Abbas has won the legitimacy that only comes, the world media imply, from an invitation to the White House. I mean sod the elections, if Chimpy invites you to break bread (now that I think of it, I’m not sure if a meal was actually mentioned; maybe better to nosh a little first), then you have been well and truly anointed.

Shrub added that he envisioned “a day when he and president-elect Abbas and Israel’s leaders could stand together and say, ‘We have peace.’” Hey, you can always say it. You say stuff all the time.

We’ve got torture, yes we do, we’ve got torture, how ‘bout you?

The lawyer of Abu Ghraib torturer Specialist Charles Graner asks the important question: “Don’t cheerleaders all over America form pyramids six to eight times a year. Is that torture?”


Also, that leash thing, “A tether is a valid control to be used in corrections,” and hell, parents have their kids on tethers at the mall. Why, “In Texas we’d lasso them and drag them out of there.” Yee hah.

So in the same package of rule changes that gutted ethics inquiries was a provision that in event of “catastrophic circumstances,” a quorum is no longer needed in the House of Reps, just whoever shows up. No, I can see no way in which that could go wrong.

Lashing out

There’s a good essay by Gary Younge in the Guardian on how the Right’s backlash continues, even while the Left increasingly lashes in the first place. The national debate is thus conducted entirely within terms framed by the Right. Younge blames Clinton, which is too easy, for turning the occasional necessary capitulation by the left from a matter of pragmatism into a dogma, “triangulation.” Younge:

“The absence of the lash simply changed the nature of the backlash. It is no longer an act of political retribution: the right has turned it into an art form.

“First it finds an enemy - preferably a weak minority - gays, unmarried mothers, Muslims, the irreligious, international law or small countries that break international law, asylum seekers, Gypsies etc. In the inconvenient instance that a real enemy, no matter how exaggerated, cannot be found, it constructs one: the "liberal establishment", the "armies of political correctness", the "liberal media" or "feminazis". Then, with the enemy, real or invented, in place, it simply creates and inflates the crisis to suit, and bingo - the bespoke backlash. No lash required. Add venom and mix recklessly.”

Let us trim our hair in accordance with Socialist lifestyle

So despite its promises not to interfere with the Palestinian elections, Israel interfered with the Palestinian elections. Quel surprise. They turned away voters in East Jerusalem (most East Jerusalahoovians weren’t going to be allowed to vote inside the city anyway, but make their way through checkpoints to the West Bank). Combine that with inadequate voter registration, harassment of candidates (Israel had the nerve to say that Barghouti was courting arrest as a publicity stunt--he was arrested Friday for trying to pray at a Jerusalem mosque without a license!), and voting under military occupation. All the reasons I’ve cited as making Iraqi elections illegitimate apply to Palestine. The infrastructure for free and fair elections simply does not exist. (Although that said, the Palestinians have a thriving political culture, unlike the Iraqis.) Israel has put its thumb on the scale in favor of Mahmoud Abbas, who they think is enough of a ruthless thug to deal with the other ruthless thugs. They’re even willing to ignore the little matter of Holocaust denial, just this once.

North Korea launches a campaign against long hair on men: “Let us trim our hair in accordance with Socialist lifestyle.” Evidently long hair hinders intellectual development by diverting nutrition from the brain to hair growth. Clean shoes are also important.

Possibly innocent lives

The US bombed the wrong house, near Mosul, killing 14 people (the US says 5 without saying how they would know that), but issued the semi-apology that it “deeply regrets the loss of possibly innocent lives.” Or maybe it possibly regrets the loss of deeply innocent lives. I’ve deleted the rest of what I wrote about that crack, because UnFairWitness had the exact same thoughts and posted them first:

Like maybe they killed 14 people in a house they weren’t even supposed to be targeting and just got lucky? Or maybe there are so many bad guys in Iraq that you can randomly bomb a house and get a few?

The insertion of that adverb shows the presumption of guilt Americans apply to all Iraqis.

A Romanian woman with two wombs got pregnant in each simultaneously. She had the first baby a month ago, prematurely, and will have the second in 5 weeks.

Don’t know about the American price of either, but the Observer claims that in Britain, cocaine is now cheaper than a cappuccino.

Responding to complaints from animal rights activists, McDonald’s in Britain is considering killing its chickens more humanely, by sending them to the gas chamber. PETA approves of this.

Yes, we have no banana revolutions today

Belarus’s dictator, and king of the combover, Aleksander Lukashenko insists that unlike Georgia or Ukraine, there will be no people’s revolution in Belarus, whether “rose, orange or banana.”


Long live the Banana Revolution!

Allowed to vote

Bush: “The positive and incredibly amazing development, when you take a step back and look at history, is that Iraqi citizens will actually be allowed to vote.” Allowed. By an army of occupation. Bush says democracy in Iraq is “hard”--there’s that word again--because “there are a handful of folks who fear freedom.” A handful if you know someone with 200,000 fingers. He accused this handful of having “this dim vision of the world that says, if you do not agree with us, then you’re of no count.” Pot. Kettle. Black.

Remember two months ago when Shrub said that Iraqis would be eager to vote when they “realize that there’s a chance to vote on a president,” except of course that it’s not a presidential election? Well, he still doesn’t know what the elections are actually for: today he said, “Once the elections take place, we look forward to working with the newly constituted government to help train Iraqis as fast as possible so they can defend themselves.” The elections are for an assembly to write a constitution, not to constitute a government.

Why Bush is the exact opposite of Batman

Naturally, the most important moments in the Gonzales hearings occurred after I posted my last. They fall into two categories: 1) the I-don’t-remember moments, when he was repeatedly asked about various details of the torture memo he was busily distancing himself from, but which he helped write. Specific methods of torture were discussed in meetings he was in, but he has no recollection of this. In other words, he claims that he was in a meeting in which whether mock executions are ok was discussed, but can’t remember the meeting, or what he might have said. I’d say that sort of disinterest, or forgetfulness, or treatment of torture as an issue so routine as to be forgettable, disqualifies someone from the attorney generalship. 2) He was repeatedly asked if a president may authorize people to break the law, specifically the Torture Act, and he repeatedly refused to answer, saying it was hypothetical, which is not a valid reason why he can’t answer it (this is well discussed in Slate). Incidentally, when they replaced the memo last week, I couldn’t understood how it was supposed to help Gonzales in the hearings, but now I realize that “that’s so last week” is actually considered a valid reason not to discuss something.


Working on his Bushite smirk, but not quite there yet.

The Iraqi interim puppet government has extended the state of emergency, with enhanced police powers including warrant-less arrests, and curfews, in order to allow “the peaceful participation of Iraqis in the political process.” On that day, the entire country will be locked down, with travel bans and curfews. Freedom, ain’t it grand?

Favorite correction from the newspaper of record:

An obituary of the innovative comic-page illustrator Will Eisner yesterday included an imprecise comparison in some copies between his character the Spirit and others, including Batman. Unlike Superman and some other heroes of the comics, Batman relied on intelligence and skill, not supernatural powers.

“The best ten” British websites, including The Ugliest Cars in Britain;
a site of pictures of “derelict London,” including galleries of pubs, buildings, graffiti, toilets, World War II bunkers, etc., and another for pictures of cafes serving bad English food.

The Gonzales hearings: “We are nothing like our enemy; we are not beheading people.”

The Gonzales confirmation hearings are ongoing as I write.

Gonzales says, “Torture and abuse will not be tolerated by this administration.” Tolerated? He’s still pushing the “a few bad apples” theory, and we’re way past that. “This administration” ordered torture, wrote memos justifying torture, and dotted every i in those memos with little smiley faces.

G. refuses to say whether the torture at Abu Ghraib was criminal, because there might be court proceedings. Oh please, Ashcroft did a little victory dance in public every time a shoe bomber or Al Qaeda gofer was arrested.

“We are nothing like our enemy; we are not beheading people.” Phew.

To apply the Geneva Conventions to Al Qaida “would really be a dishonor to the Geneva Conventions. ... It would honor and reward bad conduct.” The Geneva Conventions are about the laws of war: war is not “good conduct.”

I wish the D’s would stop praising Gonzales’s “rags-to-riches” story. Patrick Leahy: “The road you traveled... is a tribute to you and your family.” That road was paved over dead bodies in Texas and broken ones in Guantanamo; the toll on that road was too damned high.

Gonzales refuses to answer questions on torture, since all such questions are hypothetical, because “the president has said we’re not going to engage in torture.” There’s something faulty in that logic somewhere, but I just can’t put my finger on it....

The distinction he keeps making between his role as White House counsel and that of the attorney general seems to be an acknowledgment that in the former role he always told Bush exactly what he wanted to hear.

(Update: More on the hearings in my next post, above.)

Hippocratic oafs

Howard Zinn on the Daily Show tonight.

The WaPo article on the participation by military doctors in torture sessions in Guantanamo buries the money quote, from deputy assistant secretary of defense David Tornberg, that such doctors are acting as combatants and therefore are not obligated by the Hippocratic oath, and that there is no doctor-patient relationship. (The Post also neglects to say that Tornberg is himself a doctor.) Even if doctors could ever be absolved of their ethical obligations by virtue of being “combatants,” Guantanamo was not a combat zone. See the New England Journal of Medicine article.

And the LA Times, in an article rightly pointing out that only a fraction of the money pledged by nations after a disaster is actual delivered, fails to ask the obvious question: what’s the US record?

Torture, yea or nea?

Some (but not enough) Democrats in the Senate are showing some interest in turning the Gonzales hearings and vote into a referendum on torture. I say not enough D’s not only because I’d like to see Gonzales sunk but also because I’d be genuinely interested in knowing what the result of an up-or-down vote on torture in the United States Senate would actually be.

Bush picks one of those failed judicial appointees, Claude Allen, to be his domestic policy adviser. Allen (whose record I discussed here) admitted during his confirmation hearings having used the word “queers” but said he didn’t mean it in a bad way.

Evidently for several decades in Israel, Shin Bet could veto the hiring of any Palestinian teacher, a fact Ha’aretz describes as a “well-known secret.” They’ve just abolished that.

Scientists scanning the brains of shepherds in the Canary Islands find that Silbo, a system of communicating via whistling they have used for centuries, utilizes the same parts of the brain as spoken Spanish. In other words, it’s a language, albeit a limited one. (Nature article.)

And here are a bunch of doctors (you can tell by the fact that they’re all wearing white lab coats) preparing to scan the brain of a test monkey to see if it utilizes any part of its brain when giving a speech on medical liability reform:



One thing missing from a speech dealing with malpractice law: any mention of actual victims of medical malpractice. Thus Shrub says that “lawyers”--not patients, not survivors--“are filing baseless suits against hospitals and doctors” (he also blamed juries at one point). Lots of stories about doctors whose premiums are rising, pregnant women losing their OBGYNs, but no mention of victims of botched diagnoses, etc, and certainly nothing about how you can scale down the punishment for incompetence and laziness on the part of doctors without creating a rise in incompetence and laziness on the part of doctors. By the way, most of the rise in malpractice insurance premiums is due to the tanking of their investments in the stock market during the economic downturn, not rising jury awards.

No substantive conversation

The group that claims responsibility for killing the governor of the Baghdad region issued a statement: “We tell every traitor and everyone who is loyal to the Jews and the Christians that this will be your fate.” See, I knew having the Iraqis we appoint to office swear loyalty to the Jews and Christians was a bad idea.

Afterwards, “Comical” Allawi called up Bush in order not to talk about postponing the elections. Actually, the US says there was “no substantive conversation” about postponement, which is the sort of denial that raises more questions than it answers.

The assassinated governor was thought to have been running in the elections, but one of the great advantages of the electoral system we imposed on Iraq is that candidates don’t actually have to announce their candidacies, for example if they want to stay alive.

Trying to be more sensitive to the Afghan culture

SOME CHEEK! Col. Gary Cheek, in charge of US forces in eastern Afghanistan, says he has given orders for fewer prisoners to be taken, because prisoners bitch about being tortured, and just killing them is so much easier. OK, fine, he didn’t say the last part, but what on earth else is he supposed to have meant? Here’s the full quote, judge for yourself: “We are always adapting to the changes in the environment, and our commanders, our soldiers, are also trying to be more sensitive to the Afghan culture. I’ve told our commanders, for example, to minimize the number of Afghan nationals or others that they detain.” I’m not sure if killing captured Afghans is really more sensitive to their culture than torturing them.

That put me in a nostalgic mood. Here’s something I clipped from one of the British papers for November 2, 1996:

IN THE School of Islamic Thought that has shaped the ideology of the Taliban, there is an active debate on the appropriate punishment for homosexuals.

Mullah Mohammed Hassan, Governor of Kandahar, the fundamentalist movement’s home province, explained the dilemma: "There are two kinds of strong punishment. There are those who say homosexuals should be thrown to their death from a high fort, and those who favour putting them in a pit and pushing a wall on top of them.”

Back to the 1st story, in which Col. Cheek claimed that a prisoner who died in September was not beaten to death as his family claims, but died of a snake bite. Cheeky says the dead guy complained of having been bit, but no bite mark was found, no autopsy performed, and the guy certainly can’t confirm or deny that story, now can he?

Whenever Bush has talked about disaster relief, he talks about American generosity and compassion and “the good heart of the American people,” and I get a little more creeped out each time he does it, without being sure why. At first I thought it was because it’s unseemly and contrary to a generosity of spirit to be constantly harping on your own generosity, but now I think it’s because he’s making it all about us, not about the victims. A true Christian, like he claims to be, would have felt that it was a duty to relieve suffering, but nothing he’s said indicates that the suffering of others imposes any obligation on the rest of us.

Oh: when, in my last post, I referred to Bush the Elder’s “Message: I care” line, I hadn’t seen him on CNN, denying that he and Billy Bob were called in for damage control after Shrub’s lackadaisical first response: “That’s not what this is about. It’s about saving lives. It’s about caring, and the president cares.”

Poppy and Bubba to the rescue

George Monbiot makes the obvious point that the US spends much more on killing foreigners than it does helping them after natural disaster, but adds a less obvious one: “For Bush and Blair, the tsunami relief operation and the Iraq war are both episodes in the same narrative of salvation. The civilised world rides out to rescue foreigners from their darkness.”

Which helped me realize what was bothering me about this picture on the White House website today, of Shrub roping in his father (“message: I care”) and Bill Clinton (“aren’t you the guys who made snide comments about feeling people’s pain just last week?”) to help him recover after his first fumbling reactions to the tsunami: a big-ass painting of Teddy Roosevelt, in uniform, bringing freedom to the benighted heathens of Cuba.




The British Freedom of Information Act went into effect today, and lots of old files were opened, including one showing the 18-year (1963-81) campaign by civil servants to get softer, but more expensive, toilet paper. An epidemiologist “concluded that, for reasons that might not be appropriately described in a newspaper without risk of offence, hard paper was less hygienic than soft.”

Idiot of the day (from the Daily Telegraph):

A 33-year-old Italian was in serious condition in hospital after he was run over when he laid down on a pedestrian crossing following an argument with his girlfriend. The man had refused to get into the car his girlfriend was driving and was hit by a vehicle travelling in the other direction in Wohlen, Switzerland, police said.

Illimitable dominion over all

Well, the American contribution to disaster relief is finally within the respectable range. I figured at some point they’d notice that the Day 2 pledge of $35m was less than they planned to spend on Bush’s inauguration. Speaking of Bush’s inauguration, before the tsunami it just promised to be tacky and vulgar and nausea-inducing, but now it’s especially inappropriate and, according to the NYT, his committee is still raising money, $5.5m this week. Any person or corporation who contributes a dime to that unworthy cause after the day of the tsunami needs to be named and shamed, and Team Chimpy needs to stop asking for donations.

London Times headline: “Remote for Sick Woman’s Brain Is Stolen.” They’re not kidding, either, it really is a remote control, for an implant which eliminates violent tremors. They can’t turn the device off so that she can go to sleep.

I’ve said it before: Brits will bet on anything. But here’s a pleasant betting story: ten years ago a 90-year old placed a bet with William Hill (bookies) that he would survive to 100, and has won £7,000 at odds of 66:1. He’s gonna have a party, and I wish him (unlike Shrub) a good one.

And for Shrub’s little shindig, may I suggest a theme:

And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

Just a thought.

“Go ahead. Find someone who doesn’t respect you or themself.”

Douglas Adams was right (but then, Douglas Adams was always right): London Times headline: “Family Saved by Their Towels” (tied themselves to a palm tree in Thailand).

Observer piece on Burma, whose military junta is refusing to admit that more than a handful of Burmese died in the Tsunami Tsuris, and more generally on why forms of government matter following disasters.

Safire’s language column points out that the Bushies are careful to refer to the key element of their Social Security privatization plan as “personal” accounts, never private accounts.

Speaking of personal, an Observer article on American abstinence-only sex ed. programs mentions a program widely used in Texas called “Worth the Wait.” But that phrase is in no way applicable to an abstinence program: the only reason you’d care if something was worth the wait was if you actually had to wait for it. If something is worth the wait but you can have it now, why wouldn’t you? Anyway, they have a website, which is very orange. Right at the top of each page are fun facts, some of them even true, although there’s also this: “FACT: It is illegal to have sex under a certain age, 17 in most states.” The most entertaining pages, if mocking abstinence websites is your idea of entertainment, are:

• “101 Fun Things To Do (Besides Having Sex)”: Have a picnic; have an 80’s movie marathon (looking at ‘80s fashions will put you off sex); play capture the flag (guess that’s not a metaphor); groom your pet then take it to the park to it show off; learn how to play a musical instrument (guess that’s not a metaphor); visit a nursing home (looking at old people will put you off sex).
• Advice scenarios: “I have been having oral sex with my boyfriend of a year. He’s been pressuring me to go all the way, but I don’t really want to. He says that since we’ve gone this far, I might as well do it. Am I not a virgin any more?”
• Refusal skills: Actually a list of responses to requests for sex, many of them rather contemptuous in tone (“The Come-on: If you won’t have sex with me, I’ll just find someone who will. The Come-back: Go ahead. Find someone who doesn’t respect you or themself.”).

Revealed in that bit is a belief that sex actually isn’t worth the wait, that it’s something only people with low self-esteem do. Indeed, most of the site, and presumably the program, presumes that sexual desire is something that other people have. All it offers to teenagers coping with their own sexual impulses, as opposed to those of their partners, is picnics and fear of STDs. And of course all it offers homosexuals is a lifetime of solitary, um, contemplation. Now, any program trying to tell teenagers that sex is just degrading and tawdry (degrading and tawdry in a bad way, I mean, not the good kind of degrading and tawdry) or, more positively, that tries to teach them to operate rationally as well as groinally, runs the danger of presenting relationships and sex in a dreary, emotionally impoverished manner. “Love is your choice,” the site says, “You have the right to choose whom you love”. Is love that’s a matter of choice worth having?

Although if you try to declaw a cougar, we’d like to watch

Here’s the annual list of new laws in California, taking effect Jan. 1, always a wacky mixture. Some highlights: .50 caliber rifle sales are banned. You can’t film someone in a bedroom without their knowledge. You can’t declaw a cougar or a lion or a tiger. Equal insurance benefits for same-sex domestic partners. Motor scooter users require driver’s licenses. Mandatory sexual harassment training for supervisors in any business with more than 50 employees. Smoking banned in state prisons. Spyware is banned.

Colombia has extradited left-wing FARC rebel leader Ricardo Palmera to the US. President Uribe had threatened to do so unless FARC released 63 hostages. Right-wing death squad types who play ball with the government have had their extraditions quashed. In other words, the United States’s justice system is being cynically used as part of the internal politics of Colombia.

Not bloody likely

Anyone really interested in the year 1974 should look at the Jan. 1 British newspapers, which report on the annual release of official papers under the 30 Years’ Rule. Multiple British newspapers, since they all focus on different things, but this is a good entry point. Actually, nothing hugely exciting, except that Harold Wilson was a bigger jerk than I realized, and Princess Anne told a would-be kidnapper, “Not bloody likely!”

Qatar is banning child jockeys from camel-racing, so they’ll be replaced by robots. Something to look forward to in 2005.

The farce of democracy

Note to London Times: was it necessary that a story about a move towards employing fashion models with more normal weights be headlined “Purge on Anorexics”?

Most useful information of the day: the NYT says that while pressing 0 in automated phone systems usually no longer gets you a live human being, hitting it 3 or 4 times may.

From the Daily Telegraph:

Two women aged 34 and 38 have been charged with prostitution for offering sex from their hot-dog stand in Long Island, New York, which traded under the name Double Delicious.

"We’ve never seen hot-dogs mixed with sex before," said a police spokesman. "There are so many jokes, so little time."

The Massachusetts Lottery Commission went to court to defeat a lottery winner’s wish to be paid in a lump sum. So instead, 94-year old Louise Outing will get her $5.6m in installments over 20 years.

Several Sunni groups describe polling stations as “centers of atheism” and warn Iraqis against “the farce of democracy.” They’re not so big on farce; they prefer more sophisticated forms of entertainment like public stonings.

All the election workers in Mosul have quit following death threats.

Whatever Happened To...?

Welcome to the annual
“Whatever Happened To...?” Awards for 2004,
in which I pick out a few news stories, individuals, phrases, etc. that were seen briefly, if you were alert enough (like Janet Jackson’s nipple), and then dropped out of sight with major questions still unanswered (unlike Janet Jackson’s nipple).

Let’s begin:

What was the US’s precise role in the Haitian coup in February? What did we know and when did we know it? Did we actually require Aristide to resign the presidency as a condition for saving his life?

In October 2003 the Toledo Blade ran a series about a US military unit that went on a mass killing spree in Vietnam in 1967. In February, the Pentagon announced it would investigate. So?

Before Yushchenko, there was President Chen of Taiwan, who during that country’s elections (March 2004), claimed to have been the victim of a weird assassination attempt, with homemade bullets, and no one was really sure what actually happened if anything, then nothing.

Abu Ghraib: Seymour Hersh and even Rumsfeld said that there was much worse to come in the way of photographs and film, so where is it? Rummy said (in May) that he would really love to release all the pictures, but the darned lawyers wouldn’t let him. Guess the lawyers still have him all tied up, metaphorically speaking, with a hood over his head, pointing at his genitals and laughing, metaphorically speaking (or not). Also, weren’t we supposed to have torn down Abu Ghraib by now?

The lists of casualties in Iraq issued by the Pentagon never include contractors, security guards, and mercenaries of all sorts. It continues to be the case that we rarely find out who any of these people (alive or dead) are, just where the US, Halliburton etc are recruiting these people who are then imported into Iraq, given guns and immunity from the local law, and turned loose. However in April there was this article about one who had been a death squad assassin for South Africa’s apartheid government.

May: the Sunday Times (London) reported that one of the intended 9/11 hijackers, Niaz Khan, had turned himself in to the FBI a year and a half before 9/11, was questioned and then let go. Silly me, I expected a shit-storm of vituperation and investigations. When an FBI person told the Independent, “Every effort was made,” I wrote, “Hopefully, that phrase will be very slowly, very firmly shoved up the FBI’s collective ass over the next few months.” Didn’t happen. The Sunday Times article is here; there are links to other articles here and here.

Friendly militias. In August, Paul Wolfowitz proposed to the House Armed Services Committee that the Pentagon build a “global anti-terrorist network of friendly militias,” death squads, warlords and the like. There were no angry editorials, denunciations by John Kerry, nothing, so in October they slipped it into a Pentagon authorization bill, and away we go.

September: Insurgents took over a school in Beslan, and Russia let loose a blizzard of lies that remain unresolved, even while Putin used the incident to tighten his authoritarian grip on all of Russia and eliminate democratic election of governors. Two reporters who might have negotiated with the rebels were, respectively, poisoned and arrested. Russia low-balled the number of hostages, then claimed with no proof that the rebels were Arab rather than Chechen, and kept their demands, which were related to Chechnya, out of the media, even while the authorities took hostages of their own, the families of Chechen rebel leaders.

September: did N Korea test a nuclear device, or what?

October: the Al Qaqaa Cock-Up. 380 tons of explosives were looted from a military base after US forces searched it, then left the doors unlocked.

October: bombed a wedding in Fallujah. Never admitted it was a wedding.

November: The Marine who shot the unarmed wounded prisoner in the mosque, was he ever, like, arrested, or given a stern talking to, or something?

November: Colombia claimed there was an attempt to assassinate Bush while he was in the country.

Did we ever find out who was responsible for the provision in the appropriations bill allowing committee chairs the right to look at anyone’s tax returns?

I’d like to give a special blogger’s fond farewell to two phrases that helped make 2004 so much fun: “weapons of mass destruction-related program activities” (from the State of the Union Address) and “member of the reality-based community.”


And then there are the people of 2004:

A.Q. Khan, we hardly knew ye.

That woman sterilized by Tom Coburn.

Vincent White. American adviser to the Afghan government, tossed in prison on trumped up sex charges when he interfered with corrupt contracts.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. At the beginning of the year we’d never heard of him, then he was the biggest terrorist ever, although the US seemed unsure even about the number of legs he possessed, then the US military razed a city to the ground for refusing to hand him over, before admitting he had probably left Fallujah before the bombing started, then evidently stopped caring where he was or what he was doing.

Also riding the roller coaster that is the American attention span: Achmed Chalabi, “hero in error”: he was under indictment for money laundering, then he wasn’t; he was America’s bestest bud, then Bush said he might have met him on a rope line one time; he was on the governing council, then it looked like they reduced the number of seats in the National Council just to get rid of him, then he showed up anyway, and now he’s reinvented himself as a Shiite anti-American, and no one’s even mentioning the whole spying-for-Iran thing anymore.

Chalabi’s nephew. The head of the war crimes trial of Saddam, then wanted for murder, now... still in exile, I think.

Iyad “Comical” Allawi, catapulted into power by the US without some basic questions about his past being answered. In London in the ‘70s, did he just spy on Iraqi exiles for Saddam, or did he kill them? I don’t know the answer, does George Bush? Does he care?

Mary Cheney. She’s still a lesbian, right?

We will prevail over this destruction

Bush’s emptiest piece of phrase-making about the Tsunami Tsuris (missed it earlier): “We will prevail over this destruction.”

Speaking of empty swaggering rhetoric, Yanukovich is refusing to resign as prime minister of Ukraine (the parliament’s vote to fire him was non-binding, and the presidential election hasn’t been certified yet), saying, “It is my firm position that I have no intention of resigning. They are insisting on this because, before as now, they are quaking in their shoes.” There should be some sort of three strikes law on cowboy rhetoric by politicians, punishable by exclusion from all public offices. Also, wrong week to be talking about “quaking.”

For the sake of Iraq’s children

China passes a law making it illegal for Taiwan to declare itself independent.

If someone doesn’t come up with a proper name for the disaster soon, I’m going to start using Tsunami Tsuris, and none of us want to see that.

The London Times describes a cartoon being used to recruit Iraqis to join the police:

an evil foreigner — a cigar-smoking bald thug with a handlebar moustache — wants to blow up Iraq’s electricity pylons. To do so, he hires a bug-eyed junkie, a jailbird who will do anything for money. Armed with sticks of dynamite, the drug addict carries out his mission, plunging hospital surgeries and terrified children into darkness. Angry locals, tired of the chaos, call in a squad of super-muscled policemen, who race to the scene, guns blazing, on motorcycles. The baddies are handcuffed and the final message from the hero is to call the police — “for the sake of Iraq’s children”.

They have only this one (hilarious) image from it. If anyone comes across more, please drop me an email.

I’m trying to set an example

Patt Morrison on why Bush should run for president of Iraq:

• Bush could wear his "mission accomplished" flight suit all the time.
• Iraq is running out of its own politicians.
• Unmarried daughters have to live at home and stay out of trouble.
• No term limits.
• Iraqis love faith-based initiatives.

More.

Shrub finally talks publicly about the earthquake (I guess he got all that brush cleared--first things first), but his statement seemed fuzzy even for him. Bush being Bush, his notions of how to respond were very top-down, both domestically and internationally. Domestically, there is no call for Americans to help, although I gotta think American generosity would provide a little more than the $35 million Bush has promised. In the q&a, he does say, “the American people will be very generous... there’s... a lot of individual giving in America.” Not exactly a rousing rallying cry, and he doesn’t say that he’s setting an example, not in the generosity department anyway:

Q Any plans for New Year’s Eve?

THE PRESIDENT: Early to bed.

Q New Year’s resolutions?

THE PRESIDENT: I’ll let you know. Already gave you a hint on one, which is my waistline. I’m trying to set an example.

As I said, first things first.

Internationally too, it’s all about government action: “This morning, I spoke with the leaders of India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia... I praised their steadfast leadership during these difficult times” (the White House website even has a carefully posed picture of him speaking on the phone to the Sri Lankan president); “The United States will continue to stand with the affected governments as they care for the victims.” If he has also called the International Red Cross or any other relief organization to ask what they need, offer to stand with them and praise their steadfast leadership, he doesn’t mention the fact. I’m especially worried about this because so much of the devastation was in the Indonesian province of Acheh, where the government has been fighting separatists ruthlessly, and I don’t trust it not to take advantage of this situation. Ditto Sri Lanka.

In the q&a, a reporter asked about the Sunnis pulling out of the Iraqi elections, and while Bush correctly pointed out that it was actually just a Sunni party (albeit the largest one), he then said that he’d talked to Prez Yawer, “who happens to be a Sunni,” and he’d rather take the word of, well, the only Sunni he can actually get on the phone (and that’s only because Bush appointed Yawer to his current position).

Bush also quoted Osama bin Laden’s statement, even though the tape hasn’t been authenticated yet. Also, you can tell that the American elections are over, because Bush actually said out loud the name of He Who Must Not Be Spoken Of.

The United States is not stingy

Ron Suskind refers to the Bush cabinet as an “anti-meritocracy.” Spread it around.

YOU’RE SO VAIN, YOU PROBABLY THINK THIS IMPUTATION OF STINGINESS IS ABOUT YOU: Colin Powell asserts that “The United States is not stingy,” in response to a comment by the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator that didn’t actually mention the United States. Bush, by the way, hasn’t said a word about the disaster in public. (Update: the White House says it doesn’t want to be all touchy-feely like Clinton, and that “actions speak louder than words.” For example, Bush expressed his concern with the victims today by riding a bicycle and clearing brush.)

On the one hand, Russia is saying that it could work with Yushchenko, provided he not get too uppity, but it’s also claiming that Sunday’s re-run was as fraudulent as the first two rounds, and has failed to acknowledge Pock-Faced Mr. Y as the winner.

Detail from a story in the London Times about life in Baghdad:

When the vehicle was 15m away, the soldier opened fire and shot the two occupants dead. The children down the street did not even stop their game.

After World War II, Pope Pius XII opposed returning Jewish children whom the church had protected to their families unless they promised to bring up as Christian those who had been baptized.

Missouri legalizes fishing with bare hands (and feet).

Appropriate

Bush’s immediate response to the earthquake + tsunami (does anyone have a name for the disaster yet? I haven’t been watching CNN, but they must have a name and graphics and theme music by now, that’s what CNN is there for) was to offer “all appropriate assistance”. Turns out, this was just $15 million. Will some intrepid reporter ask Scottie McClellan to give the administration’s definition of “appropriate”? (Later: they’ve added another $20 million. Color me unimpressed.)

Election fun ’n games

The largest Sunni party in Iraq is very careful to state that is withdrawing from the election, not boycotting it. I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean either. With barely a month left, Americans are still talking about tinkering with the system so that the Sunnis won’t feel left out. They might have seats set aside in the “transitional assembly” (which in practice would give vastly disproportionate influence to the few Sunni voters who were both willing and able to vote, like they were Vermont or something), or they might be given a share of seats in the administration, in which case why bother having an election at all? Either way, January 30 is likely to be run on the basis of an election law written on the back of an envelope the night before, which doesn’t inspire that much confidence, even if it’s a really nice envelope.

Yanukovich is refusing to accept that he lost the Ukrainian election, claiming there were at least 5,000 irregularities, not counting the ones he was responsible for. He’d be a bit more credible if he hadn’t announced before the first vote was cast that he wouldn’t accept any results which didn’t show him winning. He clearly thinks he can do the “people power” thing that Yushchenko did, but he lacks a color. Orange did so well for Yushchenko, but he doesn’t even seem to have thought about his color.


Maybe he can hire Tom Ridge; he’s got a lot of free time now.

I don’t expect it to be nobody at all

The White House issued a statement that Bush expressed his “sincere condolences” over the earthquake + tidal waves disaster. Isn’t it nice that they specify when he’s being sincere? Wonder how they know?

9.0! I mean, I live in California, where the state sport is guessing the exact magnitude of earthquakes within the shortest time possible after they occur, but 9.0, shit.

Dave Barry’s year in review.

The WaPo has a story about the US increasing its aid for Laos’s efforts to clean up unexploded bombs from “laughable” to “a pittance.” Now when I last wrote about this, nearly 6 years ago, I had the tidbit that the US (whose bombs these are, not only because we made Laos the most bombed nation in the history of the world but because American pilots that aborted their bombing runs to North Vietnam simply dropped their bombs on Laos so they wouldn’t have to land with bombs on board) had consistently refused to tell Laos how to defuse the bombs, making the process that much more difficult.

Uzbekistan’s elections were today and were very exciting, except for the no-opposition-parties-allowed-on-the-ballot thing. But according to President-for-Life Karimov, there is no “real” opposition anyway: “When someone artificially argues that we have not registered some opposition parties that were claiming to do something, let’s be objective.” Think that would work in Iraq?



Asked about the Sunni boycott, which seems to be increasingly worrisome to the very American officials who wrote the very Iraqi election laws that are creating all the problems (distributing seats not according to population but according to votes cast), Colin Powell voices his optimism: “If it was nobody at all [voting in Sunni regions], I think that would be problematic. But I don’t expect it to be nobody at all.” They really don’t know how to respond to a boycott that was predictable. Here’s one unnamed US official: “The Sunnis would have to live with their own decisions if they boycott. Do they really want … a civil war against a Shia population that outnumbers them 3 to 1?” They’re willing to take on the US military, so yeah, I don’t think they’re that worried about, say, the guys we’ve recruited into the Iraqi police and military.

Visible minority ethnics

After a day without British newspapers (they all took Xmas off), I was just panting for the Boxing Day resumption, so this post is entirely British.

The Queen’s Christmas message today was all about tolerance and how wonderful diversity is. I assume she’s planning to keep Prince Philip locked in the basement this year.

And to fuck that message up, Britain is having a “white” Christmas. Brits who placed bets on a white Xmas (I gave the odds in a previous post) are expected to take more than £500,000 off the bookies.

As part of the new tolerance, London’s Metropolitan police will now officially refer to the, um, tolerated ones as “visible minority ethnics.” However this PC term is being challenged by the Queen’s English Society for its grammatically incorrect attempt to pluralize an adjective.

Still, this brand-new racial euphemism is my gift to you all, because you can never have enough racial euphemisms. Or socks.

Planted

Rummy went to Iraq to show that his soft gooey heart indeed bleeds for the wounded troops (Americans, anyway; with all the talk of the Coalition of the Willing, you never see an American political or military leader visit the wounded of other COW countries--don’t forget Poland!), but gave the game away when he observed that a softball question from one of the troops certainly hadn’t been “planted” by reporters. Yes, Rummy’s alleged heart bleeds only for himself, the true victim of a sneaky Improved Explosive Question (IEQ). He does not GET to dismiss Spc. Wilson’s question as “planted.” Prick.

Santa’s retarded brother goes to Iraq

The Pentagon website has a story with the least likely headline ever: “Rumsfeld Cheers Troops.”

Tells those troops, “you will look back when you are about my age, and you will be proud.” And they should ignore the “naysayers and the doubters,” keeping in mind that there have been doubters “throughout every conflict in the history of the world”, and you gotta figure they’re right only about half the time.

The Pentagon denied that this trip had anything to do with the armor thing or the autosigner thing, and denies that the Rumsfeld seen in Iraq was actually a robot.

Rummy, who didn’t even bother putting on the red costume, gives Sgt Chris Scott, who had been hoping for a pony, a Purple Heart.

Double standards

Bush, in an act of typical imperial arrogance (oddly combined with furtiveness, since he announced it when most people are celebrating Festivus), will renominate 20 of his crappiest failed judicial appointments. I’ve previously written about Priscilla Owen here and William Pryor here and here (see also this Salon article on Pryor). Press secretary and constitutional scholar McClellan insists that, “The Senate has a constitutional obligation to vote up or down on a president’s judicial nominees,” but failed to specify where in the Constitution that “obligation” is to be found.

France has outlawed insulting homosexuals (as a group) and sexist comments. There goes the whole basis of French culture. The Guardian notes that the law could mean that “devout Christians who denounce homosexuality as ‘deviant’ would be prosecuted; comedians can no longer make mother-in-law jokes; the producers and distributors of the camp comedy film La Cage Aux Folles could end up in the dock; and parts of the Old Testament might be banned.” So, yeah, I support free speech and shit, but wouldn’t that be just cool?

Putin complains that the US has double standards for saying that occupied Iraq is ready for elections but occupied Chechnya is not. OK, fair enough, Vlad, but how does your saying exactly the opposite not mean that you also have double standards?

He also accused the West of fomenting “permanent revolution” in Ukraine and elsewhere in the ex-Soviet Union. Dubya = Trotsky?

And Putin says he can work with Yuschenko, as long as he doesn’t appoint any “people who build their political ambitions on anti-Russian slogans” to his administration. So by “work with,” he means “dictate to.”

Ricky Gervais of “The Office” will write an episode of The Simpsons.

Rummy’s core

Rumsfeld says he is “truly saddened” that anyone thinks he isn’t doing his very best to protect the troops in Iraq. In fact, when you think about it, being attacked by those criticisms is just the same as those troops being blown up and shit. “You get up in the morning and you think about what our troops are doing, and I must say, if they can do what they’re doing, I can do what I’m doing.” I’m sure the troops felt equally inspired by watching you survive the suicide attack by that guy who asked you about the lack of adequate armor on humvees. Prick.

He says that the “grief [of relatives of dead troops] is something I feel to my core.” Oddly enough his “core” is composed of the same material he will find in his stocking this Xmas: hard, black coal.

Conducting offensive operations to target specific objectives

In response to the bombing/rocket attack/whatever it was in Mosul, the entire city is shut down, with residents banned from the bridges, schools closed, etc. US military spokesmodel Lt. Col. Paul Hastings gave us this example of military-speak: “We are conducting offensive operations to target specific objectives.” So informative.

Speaking of offensive operations, the documents the ACLU has released reveal that prisoners in Guantanamo were wrapped in an Israeli flag. Clearly, this required someone actually to plan this bit of psychological pressure in advance, and transport an Israeli flag to Gitmo (I presume US military bases don’t have Israeli flags just lying around). Someone really put some thought and some work into this childishness.

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.