Maybe some will run office, say, Vote for me -- I look forward to blowing up America

Favorite Reuters headline of the day: “Zambia: Investigators Seize Ex-President’s Shoes.” 100 pairs of them. Also 300 shirts and 150 suits. It has something to do with a corruption investigation. Says Chiluba: “What they have done is to bring my underpants out to the general public.”

Speaking of bringing his underpants out to the general public, Bush has appointed Paul Wolfowitz to be president of the World Bank. While his thrift in regard to hair care products is well known, even legendary, I see nothing in his resumé that hints at a qualification. (Later: ok, at the press conference GeeDubya explains it: “He helped manage a large organization. The World Bank’s a large organization; the Pentagon’s a large organization.” Sure, practically the same thing.) This continues the Bush fad of appointing fierce unilateralists to multinational organizations, because you can never start celebrating April Fools Day too early. Bush described Wolfy as a “compassionate, decent man,” so possibly he just mistook him for someone else.

On Social Security: “First of all, Dave, let me, if I might, correct you -- be so bold as to correct you. I have not laid out a plan yet -- intentionally.”

Q But, sir, but Democrats have made it pretty clear that they’re not interested in that. They want you to lay it out.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Well -- (chuckles) -- I’m sure they do!

Don’t you love how he makes it sound like a sneaky ploy by the D’s, but he was just too clever for them?

On “extraordinary rendition,” the first time he’s been asked this if I’m not mistaken, he just said that we receive promises from Syria, Jordan, Morocco and the like that no one will be tortured. Also, “This country does not believe in torture. We do believe in protecting ourselves. We don’t believe in torture,” adding, “Or is it elves we don’t believe in? I always get those two confused.”

On the march of democracy in Lebanon:

I like the idea of people running for office -- a positive effect when you run for office, you know? Maybe some will run office, say, Vote for me -- I look forward to blowing up America -- I don’t know. I don’t know if that’ll be their platform or not. But it’s -- I don’t think so. I think people generally run for office say, Vote for me -- I’m looking forward to fixing your potholes or making sure you’ve got bread on the table.

On the march of democracy in Iraq:

First of all, obviously there will be a government formed, but I think it is interesting and to watch the process of people negotiating... It’s a wholesome process, and it’s being done in a transparent way.

Transparent? Six weeks of closed-door negotiations? Also, Juan Cole pointed out that we still haven’t seen a list of the elected representatives.

On the march of democracy in Iran: “I believe Iran should adopt democracy, that’s what I believe.” But not in elves.

A plea for less bullshit

Bush has been talking about Iran breaking their obligations by enriching uranium. Except there is no such obligation. So, says a David Sanger NYT article Tuesday, “Mr. Bush now argues that there is a new class of nations that simply cannot be trusted with the technology to produce nuclear material even if the treaty itself makes no such distinction.”

No country on earth is going to accept such a designation voluntarily. Still less will any nation accept that it is a “failed state,” another term that’s been bandied about lately. Nor will they accept that it is the United States which has the authority to award states passing or failing grades.

And looked at from the ground, it hardly matters. You can use the language of international legality, talk about making Iran (or Iraq) live up to its obligations or bringing Saddam, Osama, et al to “justice,” but the people on whom the bombs drop will always recognize it for the naked assertion of power that it is. The United States is not the armed wing of the IAEA, it simply wants Iran incapable of defending itself. Iranians know that and will not be fooled by the language Americans use among themselves to cloak their actions, any more than Iraqis believe that the US invaded their country for the purpose of “liberating” them or the Cambodians believed in the “secret bombing of Cambodia.” At ground zero, those things are always much clearer.

A case can be made for Iran not being a state you’d like to see with nukes, not only because of its current rulers, but because of who its rulers might be five, ten, or fifteen years from now. And we can debate the validity of that case, but let’s stop doing violence to the language and to the concept of the rule of law by pretending to be acting under any other rule than the one which states that the country with the most expensive military hardware makes the rules, including what military hardware other nations are allowed. Really, I’m just sick of the bullshit, which only Americans and maybe Tony Blair actually believe.

At the same time as Bush tries to impose obligations on “nations that simply cannot be trusted,” the number restrictions he is willing to accept on America’s freedom of action grows smaller by the day. This week alone, it repudiated its obligation to allow consular services to foreign nationals accused of crimes in the US, and made clear it intends to torpedo an international agreement to reduce illegal logging in rainforests.

Heartened

In a speech, part of his campaign for chief justice, “Fat Tony” Scalia has said that unelected judges have no business deciding issues like abortion and the death penalty. I assume this means he will no longer cast a vote in cases affecting those issues.

Guardian headline: “Man Who Ate Friend’s Brain Jailed for Life.” Just as well Britain doesn’t have the death penalty anymore, because his request for his last meal but pose a bit of a problem.

Sorry, I can’t leave the cannibal story without another tasteless joke: But it was still better than most British cuisine.

And to answer the obvious question: fried in butter.

Speaking of brains fried in butter, George Bush made a slightly off-kilter statement at a joint appearance today with the tiny king of Jordan, presented without comment: “We view Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, and I would hope that Hezbollah would prove that they’re not by laying down arms and not threatening peace.”

Bush also said how “heartened” he was that 2/3 of Americans think there is a problem with Social Security. Yeah, we’re all fucking heartened by that. “And I am mindful that when the public says there’s a problem, we’ve got to work to solve it.” Scare the public and when they’re scared, claim a mandate; circular logic at its finest. “I’m just getting started on this issue, Steve, and I’m enjoying every minute of it. I like to take big issues to the American people.” Should he really be enjoying this quite so much?

What turns the story about Halliburton charging $27.5m to ship $82,100 worth of heating and cooking fuel to Iraq turns from a smallish scandal into a big one, is that the Pentagon audit showing this came out in October, before the election, and was suppressed, even kept secret from Congress, which asked 12 times to see the audit. Oh, and speaking of UN oil-for-fuel scandals, more than 60% of Halliburton’s Iraq bills are paid by the UN, using Iraqi oil revenues, and the US withheld the audit from the UN too.

A new Holocaust museum opened in Israel today. After initial plans not to even mention that homosexuals were put in concentration camps, they reversed themselves a couple of months ago (too-little-known Holocaust fact: when the camps were liberated, the homosexuals were not released, but transferred into prisons; the Allies considered them not to have been put in the camps because of their identities, like the Jews and Gypsies, but because they were criminals, having broken the law — by being homosexual). Possibly this is why Elie Wiesel insisted on saying at the dedication that the Holocaust wasn’t man’s inhumanity to man, but man’s inhumanity to Jews.

(Update: just did a search at the museum’s website for “homosexual.” Nada.)

The president of Malawi insists that he is not afraid of ghosts, has never seen a ghost, and it’s all lies spread by his opponents, 3 of whom, a government official and two journalists, have been arrested.

The Tory candidate for Parliament for Slough, yes the place “The Office” is set in, has been forced out for saying the European Union is a big “Papist plot.”

Dereliction of duty

The US army platoon leader, Lieutenant Jack Saville, who ordered his men to throw two Iraqi prisoners into the Tigris in January 2004 (one is presumed dead) was given a stiff sentence of 45 days for “dereliction of duty.” Saville apologized because his actions “adversely affected U.S.-Iraqi trust during critical times of reconstruction.” Ya think? And he asked to be allowed to remain in the army (it’s unclear if he will be discharged or not), and said God had forgiven him and he hopes “to use these experiences for greater good.” How one uses the experience of drowning a prisoner for greater good is beyond me.

And since this story (and a couple of other sources’ reports on this) seriously buries the lead, I’m gonna put it in red:

Lt Saville agreed to testify against his captain, who had given him a hit list of five Iraqis who were to be executed on the spot if they were captured in a raid.

Matthew Cunningham is the captain’s name (it’s not mentioned in the Guardian, AP or BBC reports).

The two guys thrown into the river were not on the hit list. Rather, two platoons had a bet (the stakes are not specified in any news report) over which one would throw an Iraqi into the river first.

Today the Bolshoi, tomorrow the world

Putin’s little youth movement, less than a month old, has already taken to book-burning. They are protesting a new opera being performed at the Bolshoi. Yes the whole thing is silly (including the opera itself, from the description), but the danger lies in the fact that while Putin created this organization to prevent a Borscht Revolution, in the meantime they have to be given things to do, to maintain their enthusiasm and involvement. Today they’re protesting opera. What’s next?

Compare and contrast the Chinese National People’s Congress



and the Taiwanese legislature.



Just sayin’.

I have a lot of pictures of dead Iraqis — everybody does

The LA Times has a must-read about US soldiers in Iraq making music videos featuring pictures of dead Iraqis, with appropriate musical soundtracks. “I have a lot of pictures of dead Iraqis — everybody does,” said Spc. Jack Benson, 22. The Times actually went to a film studies professor for a review. He liked it, so at least the soldiers aren’t the only sociopaths in the article. Says a 30-year old sergeant, “It’s no more graphic than ‘Saving Private Ryan.’ To us, it’s no different than watching a movie.”

I’ve been reading Joanna Bourke’s An Intimate History of Killing, on the psychology of war, but I think the veterans of this war are going to have a collection of psychoses absolutely without precedent.

No strategy designed from the pits of hell will prosper against the President

Condoleezza Rice went on three Sunday talk shows to say that she won’t run for president. Imagine my disappointment. Really, go on: imagine it.

She says that instead of running for the presidency, she wants to “get back to ... the world of ideas.” The two are, of course, mutually exclusive. Actually, my ellipsis hides that she actually said she wants to “get back to the California life and to the world of ideas,” and those are also mutually exclusive.

I guess if she’s not running, we’ll never know what being “mildly pro-choice” means.

The ghost mice problem in Malawi’s presidential palace is being taken care of. President Mutharika’s aide on Christian affairs says “No strategy designed from the pits of hell will prosper against the President because we have asked for divine intervention to cast the blood of Jesus against any evil plots against the President.” So that’s ok then.

The Israeli Cabinet decided to postpone taking any actions against 24 settlements in the West Bank that even they acknowledge are illegal (105 were listed in a recent gov report). They will wait until after the Gaza evacuation, because while the Israeli Defense Force can defeat the combined militaries of all the Arab nations in less than a week, it can’t cope with evacuating the West Bank and Gaza settlers at the same time.

The Taiwanese government has called for demonstrations to protest the Chinese law just passed allowing China to invade -- sorry, to use “non-peaceful and other necessary measures” -- if Taiwan declares independence. It doesn’t plan to declare independence, it just doesn’t like being told what to do by “the man.”

To demonstrate that Taiwan should have no fears about reunification because China is now a free, liberal, pluralistic, tolerant country, the vote in the National People’s Congress was 2,896 to 0, with 2 abstentions. Huh, huh, two abstentions, how ‘bout that?

Taiwan plans to mobilize a million demonstrators. Yeah, like a million is really going to impress China, where that many people show up for a 10%-off shoe sale.

Something only just occurred to me: if the US doesn’t recognize Taiwan, what entity is it we sell all those arms to?

You’re still imagining my disappointment that Condi isn’t running for president, aren’t you?

Who ya gonna call?

The president of Malawi, Bingu wa Mutharika, who a few months ago kicked the parliament out of its offices because he really needed a 300-room mansion, no longer lives there because of ghosts. Say what you will about imperialism but when the British ran the place, the ghost problem was kept pretty much under control.

A new version of the Bible will use the phrase “stoned to death” to describe the punishment popularized by Monty Python’s Life of Brian rather than “stoned,” because of fears that people will become confused and take it as an endorsement of drug use. Also, “foreigners” replaces “aliens,” in case people think the Bible is referring to bug-eyed monsters from Alpha Centauri.

Reality tv

The repulsive 15-year-long battle over the brain-dead body of Terri Schiavo continues. Just when you think it can’t get any more distasteful, a businessman has offered her husband $1 million not to pull the plug.

State-run Iraqi tv has a daily program featuring the confessions of captured insurgents. Some of them show signs of having been beaten up, and this week one died after his 15 minutes were up.

Tax collectors in Rajahmundry, Andhra Pradesh, in an interesting variation on the old Indian custom of “sitting dharna,” have hired drummers to play, constantly, outside the homes of tax-defaulters. Don’t tell the Republicans, or they’ll stick a provision in the bankruptcy bill letting credit card companies do that to debtors too.

A tiny unregarded AP story Friday reported that 37 people killed themselves in 2004 under Oregon’s assisted-suicide law, which is a drop from the previous year. The average age of the... customers was 64. I support assisted suicide, but I hope someone is properly monitoring this program because the possibilities for abuse are so great.

Why they hate us

The United States military, under the peculiar impression that it was Michael Jackson, kept children as young as 11 locked up in Abu Ghraib. Still does, for all we know.

The real Michael Jackson (which may be the first time that adjective has been attached to that person) appeared in court in pajamas. Who does he think he is, a blogger?

Core dump

It has been suggested to me that my last post made unfair sport of Kofi Annan’s wish to outlaw terrorism. Actually, the early reports spun Annan’s remarks (transcript here) rather differently than the Guardian, which describes them as an attack on countries which undermine “core values” in their fight on terrorism, and (and this detail was definitely left out) called for a UN special envoy to monitor whether countries’ counter-terrorism measures -- Patriot Acts, detention without trial, etc -- violate international law.

That said, my problem with the UN addressing terrorism is that it involves defining certain people, groups, organizations as terrorists, which is an inherently political act which the UN is simply not up to.

Blair is still in the process of ramming his terrorism bill through Parliament, removing the right to a trial, the presumption of innocence, and habeas corpus all in one go, on the grounds that 9/11 trumps 1215. The Tories have been fighting for an 8-month sunset clause, but Blair insisted during Prime Minister’s Questions that Al Qaida is more likely to attack Britain if the provisions are not permanent. Comments Simon Carr in the Indy, “You didn’t think the terror situation was so finely poised, perhaps?”

Blair has steadfastly refused to release to Parliament the full legal advice he was given about whether going to war in Iraq was legal under international law. This week it turned out that even the Cabinet wasn’t shown it, and today it has come out that there was none. All there ever was was a single page.

Still, it’s better than the guide which the Labour Party is giving MPs and campaigners on how to answer questions about the war. If asked about the legality of the war, they are advised to respond, “We are where we are,” which seems a little Zen for Eastbourne, somehow.

British satellite tv service Sky is introducing a Bad Movie channel. I’m so jealous.

A federal district court judge has thrown out a civil case brought by Vietnamese harmed by the use of Agent Orange against its manufacturers. Actually, I can see the legal point that they acted according to lawful government orders, but if you know that your product is being misused, in ways that harm innocent civilians, I don’t think the “just following orders” defense is really good enough. (Update: Simon Tisdall points out that Zyklon B manufacturers were executed after World War II).

Similarly, the Pakistani government today admitted that A.Q. Khan aided the Iranian nuclear program, but will not allow him to be prosecuted. Also, according to the misinformation minister, he was acting “in his personal capacity,” and the government had no idea that several centrifuges had found their way onto a ship bound for Iran.

Looking back over this post, every item is about -- as Annan put it -- compromising core values, assuming those core values aren’t a myth. Actually, every item but one: the Bad Movie channel doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what it is.

There will be much less evil now

Boris Gryzlov, speaker of the Russian Duma, on the death/assassination of former Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov: “The elimination of a terrorist of international standing only means that there will be much less evil now.” Something to look forward to then, the less evil I mean. Less evil would be nice.

Speaking of less evil, Kofi Annan has proposed an international treaty to outlaw terrorism, which will surprise everyone who thought terrorism was already illegal.

Cars and bullets, bullets and cars

It’s, what, 6 days after the attack Giuliana Sgrena’s car, and we still have no real answers. Pictures of that car suggest that if 300 to 400 bullets were fired, as she said, then somebody needs to get some more rifle practice. The US military has admitted that the blockade was a “temporary blockade,” but won’t say what that consists of. One detail in the NYT Wednesday: “As they rounded a curve, the car was illuminated by a bright light...” What sort of idiot puts a blockade around a curve?

Speaking of the traffic hazards of Baghdad, the convoy of the Iraqi minister of planning came under gunfire today. If the route chosen by the minister of planning includes an ambush, maybe he’s in the wrong job. Just sayin’.

There will not be any debate about civil liberties

Sorry for the multiple appearances of my last post. Blogger is really weird. To compound the weirdness, you saw 4 versions if using Internet Explorer or Firefox, but only 1 in Opera.

The Israeli army decides not to prosecute a soldier for the murder of a British cameraman two years ago, but impose “minor disciplinary charges.” The army gave 3 patently false versions of the incident at the time, and allowed the cover-up to continue. They are now saying they can’t prosecute for lack of ballistics evidence, but they waited more than a month before asking the soldiers’ for their guns. The cameraman’s widow points out that an entire unit knew the truth.

Seumas Milne has an interesting op-ed piece in the Guardian about the “fairy tale” of a democratic revolution in the Middle East. Milne points out that the anti-Syrian protesters Bush praised were actually calling for elections under a system weighted in favor of Christians (there hasn’t been a census since something like 1958, but the demographics have changed since then, one reason the Christian minority has blocked any new census).

Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions demonstrated just how much emphasis Tony Blair intends to put on looking tough on terrorism during the British elections. PMQ will only get more entertaining as the elections get closer; today’s will repeat Sunday night, 6 & 9 pm PT; new ones Wednesdays 4 am PT. The Times’s sketchwriter says of the exchanges between Blair & Michael Howard, “The relationship between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition has gone into the crockery-throwing stage. They are now saying what they really mean. It was like watching a fight on a busy train between a couple on the brink of divorce.” Click on the link to see how the issues of terrorism versus civil rights play out in British political culture.

My question is, when did being tough on terrorism consist entirely of destroying civil rights? Blair said to the Liberal Democratic leader, “Should any terrorist act occur there will not be any debate about civil liberties.” The government is rushing through Parliament a bill that includes house arrest for people suspected but not charged with anything, although after resistance from the supporters of freedom in the, um, House of Lords they have agreed to allow judges into the act, rather than leaving the issuing of “control orders” entirely to the home office. The Lords also wanted to raise the test for the issuing of such orders from “reasonable suspicion” to “the balance of probabilities.” The government rejected this, which means, literally, that it is happy to put under house arrest people who are probably not guilty of anything. Here’s a picture of a protestor from Liberty, the British ACLU, who has set up this lovely fake prison cell on a sidewalk, but honestly, what’s up with that lamp?

Dude, sometimes a rainbow is just a rainbow

George Bush meets the president of Romania. “We discussed the Black Sea.” The mind boggles.

And he tells how he once went to Bucharest, got really stoned and, well, I’ll let him tell it: “It was a mystical experience for me. It was one of the most amazing moments of my presidency, to be speaking in the square, the very square where Ceausescu gave his last speech. And the rainbow that I saw in the midst of the rainstorm ended right behind the balcony from my point of view. It’s a clear signal that, as far as I was concerned, that freedom is powerful”. So at the end of every rainbow, there’s a pot of gold and a dead dictator?

You go with the cannon fodder you have, not the cannon fodder you’d like

It was all smiles until he told them he was sending them to Iraq.

What, all of them?

The 9th Circuit rules that a man whose wife had been forcibly sterilized in China was entitled to political asylum (the wife is still in China). The federal immigration judge who had denied asylum did so because after all his wife can hardly be sterilized again, now can she?

Your vocabulary word of the day, from the Maori: whakaphone = “Raise your grass skirt and show them your bum.” (To really insult someone, the bum in question must be tattooed).

Speaking of whakaphoning it in, a common sign at the pro-Syrian demonstration in Lebanon:

A glimpse of the future of this country

From a Bush speech at the National Defense University:

Last month, when soldiers of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment were on combat patrol north of Baghdad, one of their Humvees fell into a canal, and Iraqi troops came to their rescue -- plunging into the water again and again, until the last American was recovered. The Army colonel in charge of the unit said, “When I saw those Iraqis in the water, fighting to save their American brothers, I saw a glimpse of the future of this country.”

Fortunately the American Humvee falling into a canal had no symbolic meaning whatsoever.

Names against Turkey’s unity

The Turkish government has identified three dangers to the unity of Turkey: the red fox, roe deer and wild sheep, whose very names demonstrate an invidious intent to divide the country. The Turkish Environment Ministry has renamed them, removing all reference to Kurdistan and Armenia. Says the Ministry, these dangerous and treacherous beasts “were named this way with ill intentions. This ill intent is so obvious that even species only found in our country were given names against Turkey’s unity.”

Approach these separatist agitators only with extreme caution:



Vulpes Vulpes Kurdistanica, now Vulpes Vulpes


Capreolus Capreolus Armenus, now Capreolus Cuprelus Capreolus


Ovis Armeniana, now Ovis Orientalis Anatolicus. This sheep, while too cagey for us even to be sure quite which picture of wild sheep is the right one (hey, the CIA put out a wanted picture of Mullah Omar that was actually some other guy who didn’t even have the right number of eyes, and their budget is much larger than mine, so give me a break), is believed to be extremely “wild,” a really.. quite... wild... sheep.

Bad choices

Today, George and Laura Bush went to the Providence Family Support Center in Pittsburgh, as part Laura wants to help steer children away from “bad choices.” Those who can, do, those who can’t, teach.

Laura said, “Statistics show boys are having a particularly tough time growing up.” She added, “For example, George here still has the reading ability and maturity of a six-year old.”

(Update: the LA Times writes about this under the headline “First Lady Takes Stage With Her No. 2.” Couldn’t have said it better myself.)


“Say Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?”

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.”