Showing your stomach is both a provocation and a dramatic symbol of emancipation

Today’s NYT’s front page has, side by side, 1) a story about the Pentagon’s slowness in provided armor for troops in Iraq, which says “the Army’s equipment manager effectively reduced the armor’s priority to the status of socks” -- actually, one might argue, the Army reduced soldiers’ priority to the status of socks, and 2) “US Checkpoints a Deadly Gantlet: Iraqis Killed or Injured in Troops’ Security Effort.” These stories are of course linked: in the absence of proper defensive self-protection, soldiers have resorted to offensive self-protection, i.e., shooting anything that moves. In a classic case of shit rolling downhill, Washington demonstrated a clear lack of interest in the lives of American soldiers, who evinced the same lack of interest in preserving the lives of Iraqi civilians.

Also, note to the NYT: gauntlet, not gantlet. The London Times also uses the word, but correctly, in a story on the same subject tomorrow.

Today, Kuwaiti women demonstrated for women’s suffrage, while in Germany, Free Democratic MEP, Silvana Koch-Mehrin shows off her naked, very pregnant stomach in glamor photos in this week’s Stern, because “showing your stomach is both a provocation and a dramatic symbol of emancipation”. The Christian Democrats respond by officially denying that pregnancy is political. The London Times story on this little piece of self-promotion promotes her age, which is actually 34, to 44. But they did get the gauntlet/gantlet thing right.

The Thai government, worrying about the effects of the tsunami on tourism, has come up with an answer, albeit the wrong answer: a tsunami museum, complete with “a Universal Studios-style simulated tidal wave”.

Bolton for the exits

John Bolton, new American ambassador-designate to the UN, today: “my record over many years demonstrates clear support for effective multilateral diplomacy”. And two years ago: “There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is only the international community, which can only be led by the only remaining superpower, which is the United States.” A couple of months later he threatened Iran, Syria and North Korea with war, suggesting they “draw the appropriate lesson from Iraq”. (I’ve also mentioned Bolton here and here.). (Annoyingly, while I have 4 posts on Bolton, the Google search box only brings up 2, the Pico box 3. Blogger has a perfectly good search function available to me but not to you, that even returns results in chronological order.)

More on Bolton here.

Does anyone know who the reporter was who kept asking Scottie McClellan why, if rendition wasn’t about torture, we would need to send prisoners to Uzbekistan? Scottie’s answer: a) that’s classified, b) “The war on terrorism is a different kind of war.” c) the Uzbeks are better at rendering: they use every part of the prisoner.

I don’t think all the talk about the FEC regulating blogs will come to anything, but you never know. My question is, if I link to a campaign website in order to make fun of it, does that count as a contribution?

My new motto: “Sometimes Esoteric, Never Equivocal”

The New Scientist reports on the military’s attempts to use research designed to eliminate pain in order to create a weapon Pulsed Energy Projectiles which can generate pain within the brain without doing actual physical harm -- immaculate torture, if you will. As every blogger in the universe has noted, this can be used against protests. And once it’s possible, it’s only a matter of time. In my 1971 edition of the Yale student paper-produced “Insiders’ Guide to the Colleges” (which is a lot of fun, by the way, and well worth the 25¢ I paid on impulse for it some years ago), it warns, “A gas mask is a must at Berkeley, because no matter what your political shade, you are likely to be tear gassed during your stay.”

As long as I’ve got the book out, here’s a bit from the entry for USC: “The typical SC student reads Mad magazine and Superboy comics and suffers from megalomania (otherwise known as the SC syndrome), rich parents, and general illiteracy. It has often been rumored that reading is a prerequisite for some SC classes, but this is vehemently denied by the administration”.

Speaking of literacy, I’ve been sort of following the SAT’s addition of an essay-writing segment. The WaPo has an article about the test prep classes, and evidently you’d all be more impressed if I wrote larger and used words like esoteric and equivocal. I’ll get right on that.

Speaking of crappy writing, here’s an AP headline: “South Florida to Vote on Slot Machines.” Turns out, they’ll be voting on whether to legalize slot machines, they’re not actually using slot machines AS voting machines, appropriate as that might be in Florida.

Rendition extraordinaire

Not much to say about the NYT story on extraordinary rendition not already well said by Rising Hegemon and LeftI. The official spin is hilariously incompetent and uncredible: it was done to save the American taxpayers the cost of housing these people; it had nothing to do with torture, even though prisoners were sent only to countries which routinely practice torture like Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc and not, say, Denmark.

The key detail, which I think is new, in the NYT is that the CIA was given blanket permission to transfer anyone they want anywhere they want, without individual review by the White House, the Justice Department or the State Department. Remember, the CIA is not a law enforcement agency. Its employees don’t, for example, have the (legal) power to arrest anybody or charge them in a court of law. Giving them this sort of power is therefore an admission that America is no longer a nation of laws.

So when Alberto Gonzales testified to Congress in January that he was “not aware of anyone in the executive branch authorizing any transfer of a detainee in violation of” the policy against transferring people to countries where it’s more likely than not (!) that they’ll be tortured, the weasel word wasn’t “aware,” it was “a.” Bush didn’t authorize a detainee -- one specific named human being -- being rendered for the purposes of torture, but any detainee.

I choose to see the withdrawal as half full

The White House says that Syria’s plans for a gradual withdrawal from Lebanon, as opposed to beaming all their troops back to their starship simultaneously, are “half measures” which are “not enough.” About one-half of enough, right? The spokesmodel quoted by the WaPo adds, “The United States and the world stand with the people of Lebanon at this critical moment.” Gee, isn’t Lebanon already part of “the world”? I know the United States isn’t.

Responding to recent allegations by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez that the US planned to assassinate him, the American ambassador says, “That would be a violation of our federal law.” Phew, and I was worried for a minute there.

Speaking of reassuring statements, the WaPo says that the Bush admin is adopting a “preemptive counterintelligence strategy.” I’m pretty sure that phrase has no meaning in the English language and if it does, shouldn’t. Here’s another great quote from the article: “we need strategically orchestrated operations directed against prioritized foreign intelligence threats”. This is a strategically orchestrated preemptive strategy to keep America’s secrets safe by speaking in complete gibberish.

What if you gave a manumission and no one came?

From the BBC:

The government of Niger has cancelled at the last minute a special ceremony during which at least 7,000 slaves were to be granted their freedom.

A spokesman for the government’s human rights commission, which had helped to organise the event, said this was because slavery did not exist.

It’s still unclear whether released hostage Giuliana Sgrena’s car was shot at by US soldiers at a checkpoint, as the US claimed, or a patrol, as Sgrena says. The US has been rather slow in responding to her refutation of their original story. The car seems to have been close enough to the airport to have passed through all the checkpoints. But 300 to 400 bullets were shot at the car, which I dunno to me supports the trigger-happy-cowboy theory of the event rather than the justifiable-concern-about-car-bombs theory. Sgrena’s boyfriend told reporters “either it was an ambush or those soldiers were complete idiots.” I don’t see it as either/or.

The Sunday Times of London says that the queen has to approve the design of a stamp for the marriage of Charles & Camilla. Given her attitude to the marriage, we cannot entirely rule out it being this one (from the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras):

Time flies when you’re enjoying yourself

Bush, talking in New Joisey about Social Security: “Well, I'm going to keep telling people we've got a problem until it sinks in... I like going around the country saying, folks, we have got a problem.”

Spreading freedom’s blessings

So American soldiers shot up a car carrying released Italian journalist hostage Giuliana Sgrena to Baghdad Airport, killing an Italian secret service agent. The Americans claim it approached their checkpoint too fast. Really, an Italian driving too fast. What’re the odds.

See how many religious terms you can spot in this single sentence from Bush’s weekly radio address: “Freedom is the birthright and deep desire of every human soul, and spreading freedom’s blessings is the calling of our time.”

We are not a sandwich. We are a country.

From the London Times:

WHEN an international news agency referred to Moldova as being “sandwiched” between Romania and Ukraine, a Moldovan official called to complain. “We are not a sandwich. We are a country,” he said.

I think they should put that on the flag and the money and every public building.

The Times notes that all the front-runners in Sunday’s parliamentary elections want to withdraw Moldova from the Commonwealth of Independent States (remember that?) and join NATO. This is the, sigh, “grape revolution,” because Moldova produces cheap wine. Also illegal migrants in the building and prostitution sectors elsewhere in Europe, so I guess grape revolution isn’t the worst of the available options.

According to the Daily Telegraph, Mississippi may soon be the first state in which abortion is not available, as its last remaining clinic is being severely harassed by protesters and the state.

This week Bush and Rice have been making a big deal of emphasizing that Syria “needs to” remove not only its troops from Lebanon, but also its intelligence agents. While I can see the logic of that, I can’t help thinking that this is a way of keeping America’s options open by allowing the Bushies to accuse Syria of doing something which is not easily disprovable, just as Iraq couldn’t prove that it was not making nuclear weapons. Hard to prove a negative.

When Bush says that Syrian troops need to pull out before the next scheduled elections in Lebanon, only two months away, because “I don’t think you can have fair elections with Syrian troops there,” I just don’t know what to call it, because “irony” usually implies some degree of subtlety. As someone recently said when Tom DeLay accused the prosecutors of his associates as being partisan, that’s like a frog calling someone ugly. The problem is that Bush’s case for Syria not having a right to occupy another country, but we do, and for Iran and North Korea not having a right to nuclear weapons, but we do, rests purely on those countries being bad guys and the US being good guys, which means that to comply with our demands, those countries must also tacitly admit to being bad guys. This is also behind the Bushies’ attempts to scuttle any efforts to reward Iran and North Korea for complying, as if they’d rather have those two countries nuclear than give them the tiniest of figleaves. Like all classical bullies, the Bushies want their opponents not only to lose, but to be seen to lose, to be humiliated.

Ground zero in the war of historical analogies

Sen. Robert Byrd defended the practice of filibusters, saying, “We, unlike Nazi Germany or Mussolini’s Italy, have never stopped being a nation of laws, not of men.” The predictable shitstorm arose. Thing is, should people advocating the “nuclear option” to silence their enemies actually be complaining about the analogies other people use?

What makes you think it’s not corporate America modeling itself on Al Qaeda?

Correction: yesterday I described a lawyer in the Ten Commandments case as an ACLU lawyer. He is not, but a Duke Law professor.

The House voted to allow “faith-based” groups using federal job-training money to discriminate on the basis of religion in their own hiring. They can still take the tainted tax money of heathens, who would just spend it in heathenish ways.

The granddaughter of Rev. Fred “God Hates Fags” Phelps has entered politics, ran for Topeka City Council against a lesbian incumbent, and lost big time. The man-bites-dog aspect of this story: a relative of a prominent gay-basher does not, repeat NOT, turn out to be gay.

Bush on the failure to capture bin Laden: “We’re keeping the pressure on him, keeping him in hiding.” Way to lower the bar. And demonstrating his unique grasp of how terrorist organizations operate, he said, “If al Qaeda was structured like corporate America, you’d have a chairman of the board still in office, but many of the key operators would no longer be around -- in other words, the executive vice presidents, the operating officers, the people responsible for certain aspects of the organization have been brought to justice. A lot of them have been.” You know, the kid who gets the coffee, the toner guy...

The California Supreme Court overturns the death sentence of a man convicted of a murder. Two men were convicted in separate trials, and at both trials the same prosecutor presented conflicting versions of the facts, in each case claiming that that defendant had delivered the fatal ax blow.

If an atheist walks by, he can avert his eyes, he can think about something else

The Credit Card Company Profits Protection Act Bankruptcy Bill exempts trusts used by rich people to protect their assets during bankruptcy. Of course it does.

Prince Charles is in Australia, where today they showed him an outhouse, tried to feed him live insects, and made him shake hands with topless Aboriginal women “of whom,” said the Times, “the description ‘willowy’ would be misleading”.




In the Supreme Court hearings today on displays of the Ten Commandments, Justice Kennedy complained about “this obsessive concern with any mention of religion,” and by “obsessive” he did not mean the Christian protesters yelling outside the Supreme Court building, but rather those obsessively concerned with following their nation’s foundational documents and principles. The plaintiff's lawyer pointed out that the crowds and the people sending him hate mail weren’t concerned with preserving the image of the Commandments as a secular symbol. “Obsessive concern.” Kennedy is such a dick.

Kennedy says removing the display might “show hostility to religion.” No, the existing displays show favoritism towards a religion. Not having such displays merely shows neutrality. To show actual hostility would require a monument saying “There is No God,” or “Jesus Sucks,” or “Go Ahead and Lust After Your Neighbor’s Oxen, See if We Care.” Kennedy says, “If an atheist walks by, he can avert his eyes, he can think about something else.” Like about how Kennedy is such a dick.

Fat Tony Scalia, who wouldn’t find it unconstitutional if a law were passed requiring the Ten Commandments be tattooed on everyone’s body, says “It’s a profoundly religious message, but it’s a profoundly religious message believed in by a vast majority of the American people.” He thought that included Muslims, until someone explained it to him. Although right after this display of ignorance, he blithely went on, “You know, I think probably 90 percent of the American people believe in the Ten Commandments, and I’ll bet you that 85 percent of them couldn’t tell you what the ten are.” He says the majority of Americans believe that “government comes from God.” They do?

Actually, I prefer the honesty of Scalia’s position (while totally opposing that position, of course), which at least admits to the religious intent of religious symbolism without pretending it’s secular or historical, to Kennedy’s position that not displaying them is “asking religious people to surrender their beliefs”.

Cynically

From the AP: “The United States accused Iran on Wednesday of ‘cynically’ pursuing nuclear weapons”. As opposed to the usual idealistic, utopian pursuit of nuclear weapons.

And Mohamed ElBaradei of the IAEA wants “transparency, transparency and more transparency” from Iran on its nuclear program. As opposed to glowing in the dark, presumably.

Firm evidence

A bit more on “faith-based” initiatives, which there was a McNeil-Lehrer segment on after my earlier post. There’s an interesting rhetorical inversion in the White House spin on faith-based programs, including in Bush’s speech today: they paint themselves not as trying to funnel tax dollars to religious groups and break down the church-state barrier, but as common-sense pragmatists willing to go with whatever program works, and they denigrate the opponents of those programs as unpragmatic ideologues, “radical secularists” Tooey called us -- a title I’ll happily accept -- pursuing a fanatical hatred of religion at the expense of the poor people these programs could be helping.

Turkmenistan closes all hospitals outside the capital. Says President-for-life Niyazov (the guy who renamed all the months, banned beards and gold fillings, etc): “Why do we need such hospitals? If people are ill, they can come to Ashgabat.” Also rural libraries, because peasants don’t read.

E.J. Dionne on the bankruptcy bill.

Condi Rice says there is “firm evidence” that Syria was behind last week’s bombing in Israel. Well, if someone in the government tells me there’s firm evidence that a foreign government is up to no good, I just have to believe them, don’t I?

Instability and emotional imbalance

The Supreme Court rules that people who were 16 or 17 when they committed their crimes cannot be executed, because of the “instability and emotional imbalance” that produced their crimes. But if you want proof that instability and emotional imbalance are not the exclusive property of adolescents, you have only to read Antonin “Fat Tony” Scalia’s dissent (warning: pdf).

In a footnote, he says that the standard for the 8th Amendment should be what was legal in 1789 when “the death penalty could theoretically be imposed for the crime of a 7-year-old.” The standard the Supreme Court established the last time it dealt with this issue in 1989 took as proof of public support of a death penalty the passage by a state legislature of a law. In other words, a law allowing execution of minors was constitutional because there was a law allowing execution of minors. In 2005, with several states having revoked such laws, the Justices are debating which states have a vote. Scalia denies that states with no death penalty for anyone should be counted as opposing the death penalty for minors. That, he says, would be like including the Amish “in a consumer-preference poll on the electric car.”

The annoying thing is, I found myself in partial agreement with Fat Tony: by making the standard of what constitutes “cruel and unusual” dependent on evolving standards, the Court’s majority made itself a weather vane -- “a mirror of the passing and changing sentiment of American society regarding penology” in Scalia’s words -- and you can see that in the way it cherry-picked the evidence it used to support its claim that there is a consensus against executing kids that didn’t exist 15 years ago, including taking into account international standards, which Scalia correctly points out are not considered for other constitutional issues such as abortion and the separation of church and state. Of course using the community standards of the 18th century is also stupid. And so is Fat Tony’s other idea, leaving it up to the jury to consider. One of the problems with the death penalty is that people who oppose the death penalty are excluded from juries in capital cases, so those juries don’t represent community standards.

In truth, I don’t care if there is or is not a “national consensus” on executing juveniles, and I don’t much care if the Supreme Court uses intellectually dishonest arguments to ban the practice, as long as it gets banned.

I can’t think of a better motto for an army, to love a neighbor just like you’d like to be loved yourself

Shrub speaks to a conference of “faith-based” groups: “when I think about government, I think about law and justice, I really don’t think about love.” Joke 1: You really don’t think, period. Joke 2: That’s where you differ from Bill Clinton, if you know what I mean. Joke 3: You think about law and justice?

“Government has got to find ways to empower those whose mission is based upon love in order to help those who need love find love in society.” But use a condom. No, wait, we don’t believe in those either, do we?

And then he misquotes Tocqueville. Then, “I appreciate the leaders in the armies of compassion, one of my favorite phrases -- the armies of compassion. It’s a strong word, isn’t it?” (Yes, that’s actually 4 words. Later he says that one of his favorite words is “social entrepreneurship.”) Later still, he refers to “the helping hand offered by the armies of compassion,” which is an oddly mixed metaphor. He adds, “I can’t think of a better motto for an army, to love a neighbor just like you’d like to be loved yourself.” Yeah, let’s paint that on the side of all our tanks.

He says that you can choose your faith or to have no faith (I’d actually like to praise the fact that Bush is always careful to affirm the rights of non-believers) (while giving their tax money to the God-botherers, of course). But he kind of ruined it by saying that that right is “sacred.”

“faith-based programs are changing America one soul at a time.” Brrr.

A woman in a religious “tough love” drug treatment program feels she has an “angel on her shoulder.” Meth’ll do that to ya.

He and Towey have been using the term “roadblocks” (on the road to Paradise, no doubt) for state & local government refusal to give money to religious organizations -- Bush is trying to impose “faith-based” programs at all levels of government now.

His “culture of compassion” includes letting these groups discriminate against non-believers. And, no doubt, homosexuals, women...

He wants to let retired people give money from their IRAs to charities tax-free.

It changes what you read, what you watch, and what you think

Interviewed by the Guardian, Grover Norquist confirms what I wrote 3 weeks ago, that Social Security privatization is intended to create a permanent pro-business, anti-regulation, Republican majority in which, to quote myself, “Almost every aspect of a progressive agenda would be measured against the Dow Jones and found wanting.”

Norquist: “If 100% of Americans at age 18 knew they were going to retire with a savings account, it would change their attitude to regulating companies, it would change attitudes towards envy, and how they feel about rich people. The entire secular growth in the Republican vote can be explained by the growth of stock ownership. It changes what you read, what you watch, and what you think.”

So does a well-placed pod.



Addendum: At American Leftist, which has linked to this post, Richard Estes has this comment, “Norquist better be careful. Extreme poverty has a tendency to change attitudes as well.”

Many body parts still to be counted

Continuing its Puritan Crusade, the Bushies are 1) forcing AIDS organizations that work overseas and take some federal money to sign a pledge opposing prostitution (I would love to see the wording of that pledge. Has anyone seen it?)

2) At a UN conference to reaffirm, 10 years on, the commitment to women’s rights in the Beijing Conference, the US is insisting that no right to abortion be even hinted at, and that governments should be free to punish women who have had abortions.

Speaking of crusades, in Iraq today anti-queuing militants struck again, killing at least 125 men applying to join the military & police as they were standing in line for medical exams. As we know, Sunnis believe that queues are distasteful in the eyes of Allah, while Shiites insist that forming orderly lines is a mitzvah, and require young men to form such lines NO MATTER HOW FUCKING MANY TIMES THOSE LINES GET BLOWN UP. The total number of dead is unknown because, to quote a hospital official, “there are many body parts still to be counted.”

Speaking of religious militants, Jim Towey, director of Bush’s Faith-Based program, had an online q&a at the White House website today. It’s an uninformative as such events usually are. Rick, from Worcester, Mass. asks, “Considering that Faith-Based initiatives enrich the community and provide increased safety, why do you suppose so many oppose them?” and Towey responds that he doesn’t understand why people are like that either. And Bush doesn’t want to destroy the separation between church and state, just to “restore balance to the public square [was it a trapezoid before?] and allow faith-based organizations and faith-filled people to be there like any one else.” Somehow the phrase “faith-filled people” fills me with no confidence. Towey closes by saying that he’ll have another q&a “God willing” and asks everyone to “pray for the President, Mrs. Bush, his family, and all of us here.” Would it be wrong of me to pray that you’ll all form an orderly line in Tikrit?

“Cedar Revolution” is the new Orange Revolution: that’s what someone in the State Department, if nowhere else, is calling the protests in Lebanon that forced the government to resign today. Scottie McClellan said, “The new Government will have the responsibility to implement free and fair elections that the Lebanese people have clearly demonstrated they desire.” Clearly demonstrated? By a few protests? I take it this new test applies only to countries whose regimes the US wants changed and doesn’t apply to, say, Haiti, where pro-Aristide protests were shot at by police today, killing two.

To head off a Borscht --or whatever-- Revolution, Putin is organizing a youth movement, Nashi. I was going to called it Putin Youth, but I hardly need to point out the similarities to the Hitler Youth when it’s already called Nashi, do I? Nashi is variously translated as Ours or One of Us; I like the latter for its invocation of Tod Browning’s “Freaks”: One of us, one of us, we accept you, we accept you, one of us... A journalist, and someone from a liberal youth movement, infiltrated the first, secret meeting, and were beaten up. When you’ve got an Us, you’ve gotta have a Them.

The fall of Aristide redux

Democracy Now (thanks to Eli at LeftI for the heads-up) has been covering the anniversary of the ouster of Aristide. Here’s a transcript of their interview with Aristide a couple of weeks later, in which he described his removal from Haiti by American troops as a kidnapping. Some of the details of that day are still murky to me -- was he told by Americans that he would not be rescued from murder at the hands of the death squads unless he resigned the presidency? how did he wind up in the Central African Republic? When I wrote last night that the US had collaborated “tacitly or otherwise” with those death squads, I meant that I don’t know if there was direct contact and coordination. It really doesn’t matter, because even without direct contact, a green light was given by American officials, quite openly. From my own archives:

2/12/04. While former death squad types were reentering the country and violence growing, a State Department official briefed the press that Aristide should step down before the end of his term.

2/17/04. Colin Powell talked of a “political solution,” presumably meaning negotiations between the elected government and the scum trying to overthrow it, and says “there is frankly no enthusiasm right now for sending in military or police forces to put down the violence,” a green light if ever I heard one. I wrote, “Boy, when even the Bushies have ‘no enthusiasm’ for invading a country, you know all the joy has gone out of this administration. Evidently it didn’t pass the ‘Little Rummy’ Test, by which all foreign policy decisions are now made: if Secretary of War Rumsfeld gets an erection just thinkin’ about it, we invade.”

2/28/04. Colin Powell refers to the death squads as “the resistance.”

3/1/04. With Aristide on a plane, Bush says, “The constitution of Haiti is working. There is an interim president, as per the constitution, in place.” I wrote, “Well, maybe the Haitian constitution does actually establish a process involving death squads, coups and US Marines in order to select a new president, something like the electoral college. I mean have you ever read the Haitian constitution?”

3/2/04. I wrote -- I won’t repeat the whole thing here -- that while the Bushies were trying to refute the kidnapping charge by reducing it to a single moment, and if Marines didn’t actually have guns pointed at Aristide’s head when he boarded the plane, it wasn’t kidnapping, the US had shaped the circumstances that led up to that moment.

When life hands you lemon revolutions...

Kyrgyzstan had not terribly fair elections today, complete with my favorite recent example of misuse of election rules: a rule prohibiting anyone running for parliament who had not lived in the country for the previous five years is being used against an opposition politician who was Kyrgyzstan’s ambassador to Britain.

Oh, and I’m hearing suggestions of “lemon revolution” as well as “tulip revolution” for Kyrgyzstan.

Evidently Turkish prisons are more fun than the movies led us to believe. Two prisoners were just discovered to have made a hole between their cells in order to have sex (the woman has given birth), and have been convicted of damaging prison property. The London Times headline: “Wall-to-Wall Sex.”

The Indy has a good article on the hell that Haiti has descended into since the US collaborated, tacitly or otherwise, with death squads to depose Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Why this blog is better than the New York Times

Condi Rice cancelled a visit to Egypt to punish it for its arrest of opposition politician Ayman Nour. But in order not to humiliate Egypt, even thought that was kinda the point, she also cancelled her planned visits to every other country in the region. That’s the kind of logic that only the State Department could muster.

Egypt has followed up with an announcement that there will be something like real elections. According to the WaPo,

Mubarak, 76, said the decision was rooted in his “full conviction of the need to consolidate efforts for more freedom and democracy.”

Translation: “What the hell, I’m old, I’ll be dead soon anyway.” The government will decide which opposition parties get to run. Bush will wax smug about this one, but if Egypt moves closer to democracy I’m willing to let him; it’s not like he wouldn’t find something else to feel smug about if he didn’t have this.

Speaking of smug, I’d like to point out that I wrote about Bush taking a Camus quote way out of context 5 days before the New York Times caught up to me. Eat my electronic dust, NYT!

That’s not why this blog is better than the NYT: this blog is better than the NYT because I use phrases like “wax smug.”

The fact that we are just sitting here is a good thing

And speaking of democracy, Togo’s neighbors have peacefully forced a reversal of the military coup that imposed the son of its late president on the country. Congrats, West Africa.

Mostly unregarded by the MSMMM (Main Stream Mickey Mouse Media), Operation River Blitz continues in Anbar province. And so does that godawful name. I just assumed someone in the Pentagon would rethink the whole naming-operations-after-Nazi-stuff policy, but I guess it’s Rumsfeld’s way of reconciling with “Old Europe” (although there is pre-Rummy precedent).

The problem with River Blitz is that it can’t seem to find any enemies to fight. In Iraq. But that’s ok:

[Lt Col. Greg Stevens] was not discouraged that the guerrillas had failed to appear and take on his tanks.

“The fact that we are just sitting here is a good thing. It means that they don’t have the free rein of the place.”

Way to lower the bar.

We are not going to make up -- to invent any kind of special Russian democracy

In the past few months, GeeDubya has embraced a rhetoric of freedom and democracy, terms which remain as nebulous and ill-defined in that rhetoric as they probably are in his own head. But this week you could see that rhetoric taking on a life of its own, and since freedom and democracy are, you know, good things, it would be nice to encourage that process. Putin was visibly put out, pissed off, and defensive over his own record of slowly crushing the life out of Russian democracy. Good; he should be on the defensive. Clearly Putin feels that he was scolded and criticized, and the media view of the summit was that he was scolded and criticized.



But that didn’t actually happen, at least not publicly and I’m sure not in private either. Here’s the strongest statement Bush made at the Thursday press conference with Putin: “I was able to share my concerns about Russia’s commitment in fulfilling these universal principles.” He talked about some of those principles, the attributes of a functioning democracy--protection of minorities, a free press, a viable opposition, etc--but failed to say if he considered Russia deficient in any or all of them. When Putin compared his plan to personally appoint regional governors to the American Electoral College, Shrub didn’t say whether he found that comparison valid.

But every answer Putin gave was an uncomfortable riposte to some non-existent attack:

“Russia has made its choice in favor of democracy....independently, without any pressure from outside”

“we are not going to make up -- to invent any kind of special Russian democracy”

“If we talk about where we have more or where we have less democracy is not the right thing to do. But if we talk about how the fundamental principles of democracy are implemented in this or that historic soil, in this or that country, is an option, it’s possible. This does not compromise the dignity of The Netherlands or Russia or the U.S.”

“we do have freedom of the press. Although we’re being criticized often of that, this is not the case.”

“I, in particular, do not think that this has to be pushed to the foreground, that new problems should be created from nothing”

With all his democracy happy-talk, Bush may have started something he won’t be able to control so easily.

All power to the crabgrass revolution

Immediately after Canada announced its decision not to participate in the US’s Star Wars program, the American ambassador said that the US would fire its missiles over Canada without permission, and that Canada’s decision therefore amounted to giving up its sovereignty. Sovereignty consists, and evidently solely consists, of voluntarily choosing to do what we tell you to do and giving us permission to do what we’re going to do whether we have permission or not.

The Russian Duma has voted to imprison anyone who sings the national anthem disrespectfully.

With an election coming up, Tony Blair has announced an increase in the minimum wage; at the press conference to announce this, some reporter asked him if he would wipe someone’s bottom for £5 an hour. He did not answer. I’m taping the event off C-SPAN even as I write, for later viewing. I want to see if the reporter was wearing pants at the time; just from the transcript you can’t be sure the question was just hypothetical. Possibly the questioner was Jeff Gannon.

Putin says he and Bush had a “very useful, very substantive discussion.” You know how you can tell this is a lie? Because no one has ever had a useful, much less a substantive discussion with George W. Bush.

While in Slovakia, Bush, in a rhetorical ploy, compared the elections just held in Iraq to the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. “For the Iraqi people, this is their 1989, and they will always remember who stood with them in their quest for freedom.” He went on to use a phrase I think we’ll be very sick of very soon, dubbing those elections-under-occupation a “Purple Revolution,” like the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and the Rose Revolution in Georgia. Kyrgyzstan’s opposition, by the way, is talking about a “tulip revolution” there. I believe “crabgrass revolution” is still available.

After 1,300 suicides from the Golden Gate bridge, the authorities have decided that maybe a barrier of some kind would be a good idea.

No deposit, no return

The Illinois Appeals Court ruled that a man who claims his former lover stole his sperm during oral sex and used it to impregnate herself can sue for mental distress but not for theft. According to the court, “She asserts that when plaintiff ‘delivered’ his sperm, it was a gift. There was no agreement that the original deposit would be returned upon request.” They are both doctors.

Al Kamen of the WaPo notes that while Bush wants to get the UN to impose sanctions on Iran because “they were caught enriching uranium after they had signed a treaty saying they wouldn’t enrich uranium,” the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in fact allows uranium enrichment.


Bush trying to peer once again into Vladimir Putin’s soul. Then they fucked.

I live in a transparent country

Bush says of European leaders, “We have a common objective, which is to convince the Ayatollahs not to have a nuclear weapon.”

Bush has been explaining democracy to Putin. Things like checks and balances. On a totally unrelated note, Afghanistan, which elected a president last October, today missed the deadline for announcing parliamentary elections in May. Like 6 months with only one functioning branch of government being elected wasn’t bad enough, it could now be a year.

Actually, the White House website doesn’t headline Bush & Putin talking ‘bout democracy, but rather “President and President Putin Discuss Strong U.S.-Russian Partnership.” They make it sound so exciting, just sitting around discussing the strong US-Russian partnership:

Bush: You know, Pootie Poot, the US-Russian partnership is really strong.
Putin: Yes, is strong like Russian women weightlifter at Olympics.
Bush: Strong like Condi’s thighs.
Putin: Strong like Yeltsin’s breath.
Bush: Strong.
Putin: Strong.
Bush: Lunch?
Putin: Fuck yes.

Bush: “the sign of a healthy and vibrant society is one where there’s an active press corps”. But enough about Jeff Gannon’s sex life. He added, “democracies have certain things in common: They have a rule of law and protection of minorities, a free press and a viable political opposition.” For example, we’ve got Guantanamo, a ban on gay marriage, Fox News, and the Democratic Party. So we’re set.

He adds, “I live in a transparent country.” Dude, you’re back on the weed again, aren’t you?

He says of his relationship with Putin, “we’ll have a very frank and candid and open relationship. ... a relationship where, when a person tells you something, you know he means what he says, and, ‘yes’ means yes, and ‘no’ means no. Sometimes in politics yes means ‘maybe,’ and no means ‘if.’ This is the kind of fellow who, when he says, yes, he means, yes, and when he says, no, he means, no.” ‘Cuz he knows Bush only understands words of one syllable.

On democracy in Russia, Putin said that the guarantee for democracy is the Russian people, while Bush said that the guarantee was Putin’s statement of support for democracy. OK, neither of those is particularly confidence-inspiring, but you’ll note who has the clearer grasp of what democracy means. If the health of a democracy depends on the support of its president, it’s fucked.

Putin added that his decision to replace the system of popular election of regional governors with appointment by Putin himself is just like the US Electoral College, “and it is not considered undemocratic, is it?”

And here’s Bush on the press: “Obviously, if you’re a member of the Russian press, you feel like the press is free. And that’s -- feel that way? Well, that’s good. (Laughter.) But I -- I talked to Vladimir about that. And he -- he wanted to know about our press. I said, nice bunch of folks.” Putin adds, “I’m not the minister of propaganda.”

Pictures of Bush, out and about in Slovakia:

Liberalism, Iraqi style

Comical Allawi is still in the race to be Iraqi prime minister, running as a secularist (“we believe in a liberal Iraq and not an Iraq governed by political Islamists”). Yes, Baathist-rehabilitating, CIA & MI6-connected, secret-police loving, attack-on-Fallujah green-lighting Iyad Allawi is running as the the liberal candidate. The LIBERAL candidate.



Allawi and Jaafari.

Murder in the Mosque redux

Everyone will be happy to know I passed my smog check today. So did my car.

The FBI issued a warning against a computer virus being spread through emails purporting to come from the FBI. Said the FBI, the giveaway is that everyone knows the FBI doesn’t have email yet.

Following his revelation yesterday that “I believe Russia is a European country,” Bush today informed a stunned world that “Iran is not Iraq.” Presidential geography lessons haven’t paid off so well since Ronald Reagan visited Central America and announced “they really are all different countries down here.”

Remember the wounded, unarmed Iraqi prisoner shot dead last November by an American soldier in a mosque for no particular reason? “He’s fucking faking he’s dead. He faking he’s fucking dead.” Bang. “He’s dead now.” That. Today, UnFairWitness informs us, the decision was announced that he would not be charged (he’s never been named, I believe). Lack of evidence. Too bad no one was filming the incident. Oh wait, they were. UnFairWitness has the video, too. A couple of days after the incident, I asked if Bush or Rumsfeld or a single member of Congress would go on the record as being against summary executions. The answer has been a resounding no. On this issue, they’re faking they’re fucking dead.

By contrast, today the British Army convicted 3 soldiers for the far less...permanent... abuse of Iraqi prisoners in January (this abuse), including surfer dude and forklift boy. Their officers, however, have been promoted.

By contrast, even in near-fascist Zimbabwe:

A military court in Zimbabwe fined a platoon commander Zim$2 million (£169) after one of his subordinates accidentally shot 14 spectators during a mock battle at a fair last September. (AFP)

Oops

No wonder I get so little hate email. Evidently at some point I accidentally deleted the contact information from my template. That’d do it. So there it is again, at the top of the right-hand column. Also, please note that it’s a new email address.

I have added an Amazon search box. Use it if so inclined, or shun it as capitalist evil and the death of independent bookstores, if so inclined. Go to the library instead, or garage sales, Friends of the Library sales, the Goodwill store. Use my Powell’s link, located above the Amazon link. Shoplift from one of the big chain stores. In the future, someone will invent a “shoplift” button to click and I’ll proudly feature that on my site too, if the commission is good enough.

If it isn’t in English, it can’t be important

So I’m watching the BBC World News 3 am broadcast. They say there will be a Bush-Schröder news conference shortly, which they will cut to. They do, but Schröder is speaking in some sort of foreign language, possibly German, and no one at the BBC evidently knows German, so they cut away until Bush started speaking (there is no translator: Bush has an earpiece). CNN & Fox also have no employees who know German, so they do the same. This is pathetic.

As he did yesterday, Bush twice referred to the Iranian “ayatollahs.” Guess that’s a new thing. Delegitimize them.

Not amused

Montenegro, the last former-Yugoslav republic still associated with Serbia, has proposed independence.

This is the picture the London Times is running with the story that Queen Elizabeth is skipping Charles & Camilla’s wedding. Brrr.


In the same context, The Times describes Henry VIII as polyphilogamous. I like the picture and the word, so I’m stealing them both.

I believe Russia is a European country

Bush in Europe: “As I said in my speech yesterday, a strong Europe is very important for the United States, and I really meant that.” Oh, you really mean that, now we understand. “And the Prime Minister [Blair] is one of the strong leaders in Europe, and I really enjoy my relationship with him.” He does like that word “strong,” doesn’t he?

Russia’s ambassador to the US wrote in the WaPo today that “there cannot and should not be a sole standard for democracy”. Presumably he wants Bush to apply the same low standard for democracy that Iraq gets. In Brussels, a reporter asked Bush about that article, and Bush went on and on about his personal relationship with Putin, which is clearly so much more important to him than democracy. In fact that relationship is so good, according to Bush, that it “allows me to remind him that I believe Russia is a European country”.

Asked about Iran, he offers this helpful view of European diplomacy: “Great Britain, Germany and France are negotiating with the Ayatollahs”. Subtle characterization of the Iranian government, huh? And this helpful view of American diplomacy: “And finally, this notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous. And having said that, all options are on the table. (Laughter.)” I’m sure they’re laughing in Teheran too. And speeding up work on their nuclear program. Wouldn’t you?

Before you dismiss that little comment as another Bushism, remember Reagan’s little open-mike “joke”: “The bombing begins in five minutes”? The Russians heard that and went on nuclear alert.

Bush did say that democracy was hard

To be proper democratic elections, there should be some reasonably direct, transparent connection between how the people voted, and who takes office. In Iraq, no such thing. The nineteenth-century British prime minister and foreign minister Lord Palmerston once said that only three people understood the Schleswig-Holstein question--Prince Albert, who was dead, a professor who went insane, and Palmerston himself, “and I have forgotten.” In the case of the process by which Iraq’s next prime minister is even now being chosen, perhaps only a professor, Juan Cole, understands.

What we’re looking at is so much democracy as to be undemocratic. You can’t determine the will of the people with 111 parties running, which was the result of the electoral system the US imposed. That system put a premium on private back-room deals regarding the distribution of seats within lists, coalitions within coalitions, extra-legal rules insisted upon by Grand Ayatollah Sistani, and the endless weeks of negotiations Cole describes. Skim Cole’s post if you, understandably, don’t want to put in the time required to follow it all, and see if it sounds like anything recognizable as democracy to you.

I used the Palmerston thing as my historical allusion du jour because I couldn’t remember if it was the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the 30 Years’ War, or some other peace treaty, which was so complicated that it was described as “the peace which passeth all understanding.”

Tampering with evidence

More from the Bush speech: “The Palestinian people deserve a government that is representative, honest and peaceful.” So do we, but look what we’re stuck with instead.

The best part of this WaPo story is the last three words:

A 44-year-old Anchorage man had his penis surgically reattached after an angry girlfriend cut it off with a kitchen knife and flushed it down a toilet, police said Sunday. The pair had been arguing over an impending breakup. Water utility workers recovered the penis, which was reattached Sunday morning. Kim Tran, 35, was charged with assault, domestic violence and tampering with evidence.

My breath was delightfully redolent of freedom

Bush is in Brussels, where he addressed Europe with this threat plea for unity: “No temporary debate, no passing disagreement of governments, no power on earth will ever divide us.” I’ll bet he says that to all his ex-girlfriends. Note to Europe: get a restraining order.

You know the old joke

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

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

Well, according to Bush, “the Afghan people know the world is with them. After all, Germany is providing vital police training. ... Italy is giving assistance on judicial reform.”

He also quotes Camus--let me repeat that: George W. Bush quotes Camus--saying “Freedom is a long-distance race.” That’s from “The Fall.” Clearly, someone in the White House found the quote by looking up Bush’s new favorite word, freedom, in Bartlett’s or wherever, to get a quote from some European. That someone failed to check the context:

Once upon a time, I was always talking of freedom: At breakfast I use to spread it on my toast, I used to chew it all day long, and in company my breath was delightfully redolent of freedom. With that key word I would bludgeon whoever contradicted me; I made it serve my desires and my power. I used to whisper it in bed in the ear of my sleeping mates and it helped me to drop them. I would slip it… Tchk! Tchk! I am getting excited and losing all sense of proportion. After all, I did on occasion make a more disinterested use of freedom and even – just imagine my naiveté -- defended it two or three times without of course going so far as to die for it, but nevertheless taking a few risks. I must be forgiven such rash acts; I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know that freedom is not a reward or a decoration that is celebrated with champagne. Nor yet a gift, a box of dainties designed to make you lick your chops. Oh, no! It’s a choice, on the contrary and a long-distance race, quite solitary and very exhausting. No champagne No friends raising their glasses as they look at your affectionately. Alone in a forbidding room, alone in the prisoner’s box before the judges, and alone to decide in face of oneself or in the face others’ judgment. At the end of all freedom is a court sentence; that’s why freedom is too heavy to bear, especially when you’re down with a fever, or are distressed, or love nobody.

Gonzo, gonzo, gone

The nice thing about the Net is that someone will do the tasks you think about doing but are too lazy to do. For example, I’ve sometimes talked about the George Bush phenomenon of rubbing the heads of bald men, but the blog Rigorous Intuition has the visual documentation. The man really thinks that everyone else in the world isn’t real, just a toy for his amusement. Soon he’ll be bidding against Michael Jackson for the skull of the Elephant Man.

Hunter S. Thompson and Sandra Dee dead on the same day. There’s probably a joke in that, but it’s hard enough to imagine a world that encompassed both of them, much less a joke.

Happy Displaced Apostrophe Day (aka Presidents’ Day, President’s Day, Presidents Day, Presiden’t’s’ Day, etc).

Maybe they meant to call it Operation River Blintz

The US is reportedly about to start a Fallujah-type attack on Ramadi, which has the astonishingly stupid codename Operation River Blitz. If they really wanted to scare the Iraqis, they’d have called it Operation Riverdance. A Marine major-general says the militants of Ramadi are “intent on preventing a peaceful transition of power between the interim Iraqi government and the Iraqi transitional government.” Interim, transitional, if there are any more stages to this thing we’re gonna run out of words meaning “not a real government.”

Bush is in Europe in order to mend fences--Niall Ferguson writes in the Guardian that it’s like Nixon going to China. He will forgive the Europeans for being, well, Europeans, just as long as he doesn’t have to listen to them being, well, European, for too long. Plans for a town-hall meeting in Germany were cancelled when the Germans refused to screen participants. And he will meet the heads of Europe tomorrow for a summit, in which he will speak for 30 minutes, and 11 heads of governments will be given a maximum of 5 minutes each. I’m picturing a band starting up when Berlusconi goes over.

The king of Swaziland, Mswati III, facing criticism for having bought BMWs for each of his 11 wives, in one of the poorest and definitely the most HIV-ridden country in the world, has issued a royal decree banning photos being taken “when [the king] alights from his car”. Problem solved.

Objective reporting at its finest, from the Daily Telegraph: “Confused Spaniards Vote for EU Constitution.” Although 77% of the few people who turned out to vote supported the constitution (Spain is the first country to vote on it), what the Telegraph is referring to is that few have evidently read the 87,392-page document.

I’ve run stories before about elephants in Thailand taking up painting. One was just bought by a Thai businesswoman living in America for $39,000. The painting, “Cold Wind, Swirling Mist, Charming Lanna Number One,” is reportedly a cross between impressionism and surrealism, as is this whole story.

I’m not 100% sure that this is that painting (and how could so many news outlets run this story without showing the painting?):



Post-Impressionism, maybe, but surrealism?

In a friendly way, of course

Bush will meet with Putin and says he will discuss Russia’s re-authoritarianization (to coin a word with too many syllables) and human rights record. Sounding like Reagan talking about South Africa, or his own father declaring after Tiananmen Square that it was no time for an emotional response, Shrub says he will raise these issues only in private, “so I can explain to him as best I can, in a friendly way, of course, that Western values are, you know, are based upon transparency and rule of law, the right for the people to express themselves, checks and balances in government.” “As best I can,” indeed.

George Bush, pillock of the free world

Robin Williams, on Bill Maher’s show: “George Bush was in the same National Guard unit as Bigfoot.”

Bush says that “We do not accept a false caricature that divides the Western world between an idealistic United States and a cynical Europe.” I’m sure the Europeans will be glad to hear that, in their cynical way. He goes on, “America and Europe are the pillars of the free world.” This is, of course entirely meaningless--what does it mean to be a “pillar”?--but it’s funny to see the re-emergence under Bush of the Cold War phrase “free world.”

There are even more insulting ways to divide the world, and Secretary of War Rumsfeld used one a few days ago when he said that “China is a country that we hope and pray enters the civilized world in an orderly way without the grinding of gears”. His handlers later rushed to explain that he hadn’t actually called China uncivilized, although he obviously had.

A quote I’d missed, from the wife of John Negroponte, last year about his support of Honduran death squads: “I want to say to those people, ‘Haven’t you moved on?’ To keep fighting all that is old hat.”

PS To help you

When I commented yesterday about Negroponte’s record not being addressed by mainstream media or mainstream Democratic politicians, I hadn’t gotten to the part of McNeil-Lehrer where Harry Reid showed his complete ignorance--“He was ambassador to what, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Freedonia, Tatooine, Barsoom? Am I getting warmer?” Lehrer had to help him out. Liberal Oasis has links to articles on Negroponte.

Larry Beinhart (the guy who wrote the novel that became “Wag the Dog”) has a term for this sort of data: Fog Facts, “important things that nobody seems able to focus on any more than they can focus on a single droplet in the mist. They are known, but not known.”

And the NYT today, in a biographical article on Negroponte, has only this to say: “He has spent the ensuing two decades vigorously defending himself against allegations that he played down human rights violations in Honduras when their exposure could have undermined the Reagan administration’s Latin American agenda.” It has indeed been two decades, so why is the NYT still playing it as he said/she said?

The NYT has an amusing obit of Samuel Alderson, inventor of the crash-test dummy, which includes this data: “the first crash-test dummies were cadavers. While useful in collecting basic data, they lacked the durability required for repeated trials.”

Responding to the assassination of Lebanon’s former prime minister, the tourist minister resigned today. Well, it can’t have made his job any easier.

The Daily Telegraph says that the Americans are claiming that the safest place in Iraq is... wait for it ... Fallujah. In one wrecked school, a Marine painted this graffito (note to Telegraph: one graffito, two graffiti): “We came, we saw, we took over all. PS To help you.”

The pope says, in memoirs coming out next week, that the Virgin Mary saved his life during the 1981 assassination attempt; “it was just as if someone guided this bullet.” He explains why the bullet nevertheless hit him: “that Mary chick is seriously passive-aggressive.”

National reconciliation

The WaPo thinks the Grand Ayatollah Sistani’s fatwas are too intrusive, citing this one: “It is unworthy to drink too much water; to drink water after eating fatty food; and to drink water while standing during the night. It is also unworthy to drink water with one’s left hand; to drink from the side of a container which is cracked or chipped off, or from the side of its handle.” Also appearing today is this AP story about an Israeli rabbi who says that sticking used gum under a desk is a violation of Jewish law.

The WaPo interviewed Iyad “Comical” Allawi, who warns against moves away from “national reconciliation” and says he might go back into exile after leaving office if he doesn’t feel safe enough. In other words for him national reconciliation means “Please don’t kill me.”

All-Powerful

Israel will suspend the demolition of the houses of the families of suicide bombers. Astonishingly, they have realized that this policy just pissed people off.



The Vatican issues a denunciation of the “religion of health,” by which they mean people in wealthy countries wanting their ailments cured by medical science rather than suffering stoically, like the pope, who is 133 years old.

And the Pontifical University Regin Apostolorum in Rome is offering a class in exorcism. Say, you know how shakes and speaks incoherently as if possessed: the pope. Just sayin’.

Guardian headline: “Bush Appoints All-Powerful Spy Chief.” I think if Negroponte was all-powerful, he wouldn’t be bald. Just sayin’.

Whatever it Was, I Was Against It

McNeil-Lehrer had a discussion of Negroponte in which his record in Honduras wasn’t even mentioned. This country’s media and politicians have no memory at all. That’s how Jeff Sessions can go on tv to talk about judicial nominees being rejected without anyone mentioning his own past as a failed nominee. This is also how everyone can have fun with the story of Mary Kay Le Tourneau, the teacher convicted of stat rape, now marrying her victim, without mention of her father, Rep. John Schmitz, an Orange County congresscritter so far to the right he thought Reagan was a communist (literally), and who when Mary Kay was a child publicly pulled her out of several schools when they began sex ed courses.

Which brings me to my new project. One of the goals of this blog is to pay attention to the historical context of current events. One means to this end is that my archives go further back than those of most blogs. In 1996 I began sending out comments on the news to the few friends I knew who had email. The number of people on the list grew and so did the volume of my writing. I developed a bloggy style long before the word blog was coined. When I finally began an actual blog last July, I also posted all the old emails, shorn of the copyrighted newspaper articles, Dave Barry pieces and whatnot, all available in the archives linked in the right-hand column (Blogger didn’t foresee my need to retroactively give posts dates earlier than 1999, so the January 1999 link actually contains material from January 1996 through January 1999). So you can read what I had to say about the Clinton impeachment or the 2000 elections or anything else, although I’m not sure why you would, and it’s all searchable through the Google box at the top of the page. Here’s what I said the first time I ever mentioned Osama bin Laden, after the embassy bombings in August 1998:

I suspect this bin Laden character has been promoted, and probably promoted way out of his league, to Darth-Vader-of-the-year to put a human face on the Enemy.

Oops.

But before that, in 1986, I began taking notes on the news into a series of notebooks, to assist my memory, to preserve stupid remarks by Ronald Reagan that I wanted to be able to quote precisely, and because if you’re paying serious attention to a subject, including current events, you take notes. It was also a place to tape cut-out articles and political cartoons, right down quotes, etc.

I’ve recently begun to type those notes into my computer, a little at a time, something I’ve always wanted to do so that I don’t have to read my own handwriting and pore through dozens of pages every time I want to look something up. The job has turned out to be quite interesting, a chance to relive Iran-Contra, the fall of the Soviet Union and the Dan Quayle years. Remember the 1980s? The movies: 8½, Grand Illusion, The Seventh Seal, Holiday. And the music: Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Dvořák--whatever happened to those guys?

Now these are notes written to myself, they are not a blog, but they may be useful to someone and it takes almost no extra work at all to put them online, so allow me to introduce: “Whatever It Was, I Was Against It.”
1986-89, so far, but I’ll add more as I type it. The permanent link is in the column on the right, at the top of the archives list.

Not moving with the democratic movement

During the Iran-Contra investigations, which now seem like a much more innocent time--a thought which would have astonished me at the time--it wasn’t quite clear if John Negroponte was actively colluding with and covering up and lying about the Honduran government’s use of death squads, or if he was lazy, stupid and oblivious. With the information we have now (it’s all over the Web today, you can’t take a step without getting some Negroponte on your shoe), it was definitely the former, but the point is that Negroponte’s attempts to save his reputation depended on presenting himself as oblivious to what was going on around him (the Mr. Magoo/Ronald Reagan defense). So he’s the perfect man to be Chimpy’s intelligence tsar, even though he only got the job after everyone else refused it.

One of my favorite Negroponte moment’s was when he was appointed ambassador to Iraq. The CPA put up a picture of him at the UN, this one


standing in front of Picasso’s Guernica. Within hours, they’d cropped the picture.



The Bushies still aren’t giving a coherent reason for having withdrawn the ambassador to Syria, if they’re not going to blame it explicitly for the Hariri assassination. Here’s Bush, today:

We’ve recalled our ambassador, which indicates that the relationship is not moving forward, that Syria is out of step with the progress being made in a greater Middle East, that democracy is on the move. And this is a country that isn’t moving with the democratic movement.

Focusing on indecency

BBC headline: “US Congress Focuses on Indecency.” No kidding.

The Onion offers details of the Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire.

Musical condoms.

I’ve noticed before that Bush’s Social Security rhetoric is often addressed narrowly to his own age group. I don’t have a Bush quote handy, but the White House website says

The President is committed to keeping the promise of Social Security for today’s retirees and those nearing retirement and strengthening Social Security for our children and grandchildren.

So anyone under 55 falls into the category of “our” children and grandchildren.

Switzerland is to return to Nigeria money stolen by the late dictator Sani Abacha, in a devastating blow to the country’s scam email trade, whose discerning clientele seem already to have moved on: someone bought this picture and a companion piece, painted by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge in 1903, for $590,400.



And still a better investment idea than Bush’s Social Security plan. Coolidge also wrote an opera and was an inventor and a banker.

Finding solace only in the works of P. G. Wodehouse

The Bushies are going after Syria for Rafik Hariri’s assassination, and clearly they’ve learned something from the Iraqi WMD fiasco, because they aren’t even bothering to fabricate evidence this time, and some of them (speaking anonymously, so far) are saying that Syria can be blamed even if it didn’t do it. It will be awfully hard to accuse them of lying if they refuse to use any facts or arguments. Or irony, since they’re saying that even if it was just the action of one of Lebanon’s many terrorist groups, Syria’s occupation of Lebanon created the instability that made that possible. Do as we say, not as we do. The Bushies’ foreign policy is just like its budget--it pretends the costs of the Iraqi occupation are “off-book” and don’t count. So the State Dept says that the recall of the American ambassador to Syria is to express the US’s “profound outrage” over the assassination, but that we’re not accusing Syria of that assassination. Makes perfect sense.

I don’t know if Syria is responsible. Given Hariri’s extensive protection, some are saying that only a state has the capability of pulling something like this off, but the same thing was said after September 11. Actually, it’s hard to see why Syria would carry out this assassination of a man no longer in office at this particular time when 1) the US is looking for an excuse to go after this particular “outpost of tyranny” and 2) Israel is desperately trying to derail Russian sales of anti-aircraft missiles to Syria.

Speaking of keeping the facts off-book, Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions appeared on McNeil-Lehrer today, calling the D’s obstructionists for failing to pass all of Bush’s judicial nominees. Once again, no one had the bad taste to bring up Sessions’s past as a Reagan nominee for the federal bench, rejected because of certain racist acts in his past and remarks like “I used to think the Klan was all right until I learned they smoked marijuana.”

On the same subject, Orrin Hatch was quoted as saying that the D Senators just hate Bush. Somehow Hatch’s air of sorrowful sanctimony lets him get away with this sort of crap. A couple of weeks ago, his speech in favor of Alberto Gonzales outright accused D’s of opposing him because he was Hispanic.

About the increasing use of the word “obstructionist”: the term implies that the only legitimate agenda is that of the majority party, as if every one of the Democratic congresscritters was not elected in their own right, with their own mandate. The long term for that attitude is “tyranny of the majority,” the short term is “tyranny.”

From the Daily Telegraph:

President Mwai Kibaki of Kenya is said to have taken to his bed in despair, finding solace, according to a cabinet colleague, “only in the works of P G Wodehouse”.

Thank you for clearing that up: from the NYT’s corrections section: “A front-page article on Friday about Prince Charles's announcement that he will marry his longtime lover, Camilla Parker Bowles, misstated the name of a ceremonial post held by her former husband, Andrew Parker Bowles. It is silver stick in waiting to the queen, not silver stick in waiting to the prince.”

Guns or butter, elites or cadres, reconciliation or liberation, paper or plastic

Looking at the names of parties that will have seats in the new Iraqi National Assembly, I can’t decide which one I like best, the National Independent Elites and Cadres Party, or the Reconciliation and Liberation Entity. Advice to both: pick one thing and stick with it; either elites or cadres, reconciliation or liberation.

Also, the Elites ’n Cadres have 3 seats, so that’s one for the elites, one for the cadres, and fearsome civil war over the 3rd seat.

The prime minister is likely to be Ibrahim Jaafari, the brother-in-law of Grand Ayatollah Sistani. Article 1 of the new Iraqi Constitution: It is mandatory for everyone to own a Grand Ayatollah Sistani bath towel.



I wonder how wise it was to choose a former exile (1980-2003).

The world condemned the Lord’s Resistance Army (in Uganda) for forcibly impressing thousands of children. But what to do with them when they are liberated? The Ugandan government has an idea: stick them in the Ugandan Army.

Try to imagine a statement so stupid that a Fox exec would have to resign for saying it

A bunch of stories have framed the resignation of Eason Jordan from CNN as the victory of bloggers, and gosh don’t I feel proud. You’ll notice that the content of Jordan’s remarks was not only so far beyond the pale that he had to quit, but evidently were so far beyond the pale that there was no necessity for the media to fact-check, and ask whether the US military actually has targeted journalists in Iraq, which in at least the cases of Al Jazeera and the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad it certainly did (click here for an April 2003 Robert Fisk article).
(Update: and a current AlterNet article.)

There are other disturbing elements to this: Jordan was an executive, not a reporter, and certainly not on the air, so I’m not sure what standards his comments should be held to and whether we want to open up that can of McCarthyism. Also, since the wingers seem to think that the transcript of the not-open-to-the-public event at which Jordan spoke should be made available to them, well, I’ve always been curious about what people like Bush and Cheney say at all those fundraisers they go to....

And, hey, what about Cheney’s energy task force? And...

Speaking of ridiculously disproportionate responses, the McLibel case is now entering its 15th year, with a ruling due from the European Court of Human Rights.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the Pentagon website puts up a picture of a new plane, not at all photographed to look like a penis.

Now you have to sit down and decide whether you want this relationship to continue

Tony Blair, who is so much less popular than the party he leads, admits to past arrogance in an arrogantly humble speech, if you know what I mean, and says he hasn’t listened to the British people enough. He creepily compares his relationship with the British people to a marriage, saying that they can “go off with” Michael Howard or Charles Kennedy if they like, but “now you, the British people, have to sit down and decide whether you want this relationship to continue”. Why does that require sitting down, I wonder? I’m sure Charles’s proposal to Camilla was more awkward (“Mummy says it’s alright”), but Blair seems once again to have forgotten that he is not a president but a prime minister, answerable to Parliament.

Once again, life is imitating “The Prisoner.”

A large black ball, originally designed by Swedish scientists for use on Mars, could be the latest weapon in the war against burglars.

The device, developed at the University of Uppsala, acts as a high-tech security guard capable of detecting an intruder thanks to either radar or infra-red sensors. Once alerted, it can summon help, sound an alarm or pursue the intruders, taking pictures. ...

Serbian President Boris Tadic goes to Kosovo in an echo of Milosevic’s visit to the province 16 years ago, and tells an audience of ethnic Serbs, “This is Serbia.” No it isn’t, and fuck off out of it.

Iraqi elections

After two weeks, and no explanation for what the problem was with those 300 ballot boxes or how the problem was resolved, the Iraqi election results have finally been released. Figures on how many people were killed on election day still haven’t been added up, for some reason.

I’ve been assuming that the Iraqi ballot boxes would be stuffed, at the very least to increase voter turnout to make the election look more legitimate. So in one sense, it’s a good sign that the official turnout figure for Anbar province (including the rubble fields of Fallujah) was an uninflated-sounding 2%. In another sense, of course, a national election is not legitimate when that many people are not represented.

It’s also nice to see a politician spend huge amounts of money from mysterious sources, monopolize the airwaves, and then be thoroughly trounced, as Iyad “Comical” Allawi has been. It will be interesting to see if the secret police thugs and torturers he has recruited transfer their loyalties to whoever replaces him.

Some years ago San Francisco, which like Iraq had at-large elections, had a polling station which for some years was in an upscale bakery, which gave away pastries to voters. Voter turnout in that precinct was nearly 100%, giving that precinct disproportionate, um, weight in the board of supervisors, so the bakery was quite rightly told to stop. That is how these things should work. In Iraq, that 2% turnout was matched by 92% turnout in a Kurdish region.

The Indy says that US officials are having “are you now or have you ever been” discussions with Iraqi politicians to see how close they are to Iran, and how the Iraqi government will react when the US attacks Iran.

Way out there

So the US was sending spy drones over Iran, and the Iranians assume not that they’re from the Great Satan, but that they’re UFOs. Infidels from Alpha Centauri, no doubt. The truth is out there.

A couple of entries to a New Statesman competition last month, which asked for updated sayings:

It’s a short road that has no Starbucks.

Look before you invade.

Three exemplars of democratic values

Schwarzenegger tells a Republican group that Democratic members of the state legislature are “addicts” who “cannot stop spending money.” But the LAT buries the lead by focusing on that quote. The key line is actually his most explicit statement yet of the führerprinzip: “Now,” he said, “we have a governor who represents the people’s interests instead of special interests.” D’s didn’t “get the message” of the recall of Gray Davis in 2003: “If they had been on the ballot, they all would have been recalled.” So Ahhnuld considers himself the only genuine representative of the people (notwithstanding the 2004 elections).

After all the talk about spreading freedom, Bush has had to send Henry Kissinger to Moscow to reassure Putin that he doesn’t mean a word of it. Because if you want to send a message about how important ideals and democracy are to you, the messenger you choose would just have to be Henry Fucking Kissinger.

Speaking of bad representatives of democratic values, Dexter Filkins’s NYT story about Achmad Chalabi’s attempt to wheel ’n deal his way into the office of prime minister takes seriously the line that Chalabi is out of favor with the Americans. Actually, it’s hard to tell; the position of the Bushies on Iraq’s future has become curiously opaque over the last few months. Did his Pentagon backers really back away from him? If so, Filkins gives a singularly unlike reason for it: “Mr. Chalabi’s footing in the Bush administration steadily eroded as it became clear that much of the intelligence he had turned over to the American government, which was used to justify an invasion, turned out to have been exaggerated or false.” Sure, everyone else who produced false intelligence is promoted, but Chalabi is dropped for doing the same, and if you buy that, I’ve got some Nigerien yellowcake to sell you.

So Iraqi “democracy,” which was fresh and young and hopeful two weeks ago has, before the votes are even counted, become so decrepit, debased and cynical that Chalabi, a man with no discernible principles except self-interest, could be a major player in the backroom intrigues which will establish an Iraqi administration, with no particular reference to how Iraqis actually voted. Maybe they could be persuaded to take Arnold Schwarzenegger instead, cuz I hear he supports the people’s interests rather than the special interests. Maybe they could take Kissinger as well.

America is in fact a land of liberators, not a land of occupiers

The Czech parliament rejects gay marriage by a single vote.

Secretary of War Rumsfeld, in Iraq, tells American troops occupying Iraq, “You have shown that America is in fact a land of liberators, not a land of occupiers.” And has been ever since we liberated it from the Indians.

Rep. Louise Slaughter has written to the White House asking how “Jeff Gannon” was allowed to use a pseudonym as a White House “reporter” when she is forced to continue calling herself Louise Slaughter, it just isn’t fair.

ATTENTION (TO SPELLING) MUST BE PAID: A word to the Daily Telegraph: entitling the obituary of Arthur Miller “Death of a Playright” might have made you seem cleverer if the word were not actually playwright. You might as well have gone with your first instincts: “Guy Who Shagged Marilyn Monroe Fifty Years Ago Dies.”

But the Telegraph almost redeems itself with the headline “Gays Angry at Penguin Plan.”

A plan by a German zoo to test the sexuality of a group of suspected homosexual penguins by bringing in females has sparked outrage among gay and lesbian groups, who fear keepers might force them to abandon their male partners.

Bremerhaven zoo saw the male penguins trying to mate and hatch stones.

Isolated

Don’t expect to get much sense out of the British newspapers today: two middle-aged unemployed people announced their engagement.

The reason I quoted a chunk of North Korean verbiage in my last post, and linked to their statement about nukes, was to suggest that North Korean leaders do not think in the same way as we do. This is why dealing with them is so dangerous and requires such care and expertise. Unfortunately, the US is now ruled by folks who share both George Bush’s complete inability to comprehend people who don’t view the world the same way he does, and his complete lack of curiosity about the thought patterns of other peoples and cultures, and who portray their own ideals as universal ideals, meaning there really is no reason to attempt to understand other ideals, which are by definition less than universal. So when Condoleezza Rice says that North Korea’s rejection of the 6-party talks (which were always a fig-leaf for our unwillingness to talk directly with North Korea) will just isolate them further, you have to wonder how she’s failed to notice that North Korea’s rulers like being isolated and work very hard indeed to maintain their isolation.



Asked about North Korea’s belief that the US was coming after it, Condi says, “Well, I’m not quite sure to what the North Koreans are referring.” Can’t you?

Condi also praises Saudi Arabia’s municipal elections, while hoping that “at one point [they] would include women.” She failed to add that half the local council seats, and mayors, would still be appointed by the monarchy, and would have no defined powers.

Are you aware of the reason the Saudis give for the exclusion of women? Nothing religious or ideological about women being stupid or impure or whatever, but the somehow more insulting, because so completely dismissive, excuse that it would have been too much work to build all those (separate, naturally) polling stations and ballot boxes



for women. I mean, even in Iraq we managed...



...well ok, bad example. You’ll notice no one ever suggests that if they can only manage polling places for half the population, the men could sit this one out.

Revealing the wicked nature and brazen-faced double-dealing tactics of the U.S. as a master hand at plot-breeding and deception

The Axis of Evil is acting all axis of evilly today. Both Iran and North Korea issued statements saying they’ll be keeping their nuclear programs, thank you very much.

The North Korean government is always hard to interpret, because it speaks entirely in badly translated jargon which it may actually believe. Sometimes this is entertaining, and when I’m bored I surf to the NK news agency website for stories like “Japan Termed Wicked Trickster.” But the problem is that, believing in their own over-blown jargon, sometimes they believe in our over-blown jargon as well--axis of evil, regime change, outpost of tyranny, etc etc--and think we’re about to go to war with them. Their statement today said, yeah we got nukes (“nukes for self-defence”) and whaddya gonna do about it, denouncing American attempts to push regional diplomacy as “a far-fetched logic of gangsters as it is a good example fully revealing the wicked nature and brazen-faced double-dealing tactics of the U.S. as a master hand at plot-breeding and deception.” Uh, yeah, and what’s your point?

Freedom and liberty, if you have a penis and don’t mind it being flaccid

Thursday there will be municipal elections in Saudi Arabia, and women will not be allowed to vote. Has anyone heard any outrage from the United States government, as part of its new mission to spread freedom and liberty and still more liberty and yet more freedom everywhere?

A bill is being proposed to ban Medicare from covering Viagra. But was it necessary for the WaPo to say that such coverage “could strain the already strapped program”?

The coup in Togo has been condemned by ECOWAS and other African organizations. This is a good sign, and compares well with the toleration given to Zimbabwe’s deepening fascism.