Operation Matador and other blood sports

The LA Times has an interesting account of “Operation Matador” (Next up: Operation Cockfight, Operation Bear-Baiting, Operation Dog Fight, Operation Pig-Sticking...). It suggests strongly that the operation succeeded in its objectives only to the extent that the insurgents cooperated. That is, it got under way so slowly, due to some combination of over-optimistic planning, too little manpower, and heavy lumbering armored vehicles which it took a whole day to get across the Euphrates, that anyone who wanted to slip over the border into Syria could do so; anyone who stood and was killed or captured wanted to stand and be killed or captured. Also, an intriguing sentence in the WaPo report: “Americans had come through their communities a few days ahead of the Marines, scaring foreign fighters into flight.”

The idea behind Operation Matador was that this distant part of western Iraq was the new Fallujah, a gathering point for insurgents, so there was a need, according to the colonel in charge of the operation, for “proving that they don’t have any safe havens.” Note the verb: Matador is about proving something rather than accomplishing something. The Marines went to the Ramana region to pee on it to mark their territory; the goal was psychological rather than strictly military. And the proof of this is that, while the military claims to have “neutralized this sanctuary,” they’re not actually planning to occupy the area, and are now in the process of leaving; the insurgents will be back in days. The Marines are claiming victory, but the jihadis are probably claiming the same thing, with at least as much justification.

Two things about the LAT report: 1) it claims that locals welcomed the Marines, but it’s not clear whether the reporter is “embedded” or just passing on what the military told him. (Update: the WaPo says locals talked to “a reporter” through a US military translator. That’s the sort of detail a reader needs to evaluate a source.) 2) Again, a newspaper buries a story’s punchline in the penultimate paragraph: on why Iraqi troops didn’t participate, possibly as picadors: they were on vacation that week.

American policy in Central Asia just goes from one awful extreme to another, doesn’t it? Either we’re toadying up to people-boiling dictators, or... a writer in the LA Times says the US is “helping train democratic leaders for 2006 presidential elections in Belarus”.

They came for Wal-Mart and I did not speak out, because I was not Wal-Mart; they came for Target and I did not speak out...

Flagstaff has a ballot initiative Tuesday against Wal-Mart’s proposed expansion of its local store. Wal-Mart ran an ad equating this attempt to restrict the rights of Flagstaffians to shop as they please with book-burning. Wal-Mart has had to apologize, not because the comparison was both laughable and odious, but because the particular book-burners in the photograph used in their ad (blurrily pictured here, pdf file, 200k) were Nazis in 1933 Berlin; if the book-burners had been Americans in the South, it would have been ok. According to the WaPo, other Wal-Mart ads have “included a picture of a child praying and a person with duct tape over her mouth.”

In a story about a Marine who won’t even be court-martialed for shooting two unarmed Iraqi prisoners, possibly in the back as they were kneeling, emptying his weapon, reloading, and firing 30 more rounds into their bodies, the WaPo saves the punchline for the last sentence: “Pantano continues to serve as a Marine training officer at Camp Lejeune, N.C., as he awaits a decision from Maj. Gen. Richard Huck, commander of the 2nd Marine Division in Iraq, on whether to drop charges.”

In Uzbekistan, nobody fights against women, children or the elderly

Another website not to go to for news on Uzbekistan, where the death toll is now in the hundreds: that of the American embassy there. However, you can look at the page that details American payments to the Uzbek government in 2004, including money to “focus on strengthening the institutions of civil society, supporting human rights, and addressing the problem of torture”. Yeah, how’s that going? Another $10.7m went to “security and law enforcement” or, in other words, torture. Link. Other link.

Karimov says that he didn’t gave any order to shoot, it just kinda happened, but denied that children had been killed: “In Uzbekistan, nobody fights against women, children or the elderly.” Consider yourselves reassured.

The perception of governance is important

Addendum: when McClellan called for both sides in Uzbekistan to “exercise restraint at this time,” did he mean that the demonstrators should refrain from bleeding too much on the soldiers?

For objective, up-to-the-minute coverage of all things Uzbek, don’t click here. For example:

Due to latest events, The President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov arrived in the city of Andizhan early in the morning of May 13th.

After the comprehensive study of the situation, the head of the state, gave specific instructions to corresponding organizations and government bodies.

In the evening of the same day he returned to Tashkent.

Just paints a picture, doesn’t it?

Luis Posada Carriles (previous posts) applied for asylum in the US this week, on the run from both Cuban and Venezuelan justice. Can you file those papers through your lawyer, without even making an appearance? And if not, why is he not in custody, since he did enter the country illegally. If the Department of Homeland Security won’t go looking for him, maybe we could get the Minutemen.

The US military is responding to the increased violence in Iraq by suggesting that the Iraqi interim/transitional/imaginary government might want to do something look like they’re doing something about it. Sez “one senior military officer”: “The perception of governance is important.”

Speaking of the perception of governance, was Bush upset that he wasn’t informed of the panic back at the homestead while he bicycled on obliviously? Fuck no:

The president also tried to deflect concern about being out of the loop, telling an audience yesterday, with a grin, “I strongly urge you to exercise on a regular basis.”

President Bush, followed by a Secret Service agent.

And we urge both the government and the demonstrators to exercise restraint at this time

Will Durst explains Social Security reform and coins a phrase I hereby command my fellow bloggers to use: faith-based retirement.

I’m not entirely sure of the dynamics driving the unrest in Uzbekistan. I know the regime is one which boils its enemies alive and which is threatened by Islamic groups that might be less attractive if some other vehicle of opposition existed. The US, which considers President-for-Life Karimov an ally in The War Against Terror (TWAT), has been singularly unhelpful. Here’s Scotty McClellan today:

We have had concerns about human rights in Uzbekistan, but we are concerned about the outbreak of violence, particularly by some members of a terrorist organization that were freed from prison. And we urge both the government and the demonstrators to exercise restraint at this time. The people of Uzbekistan want to see a more representative and democratic government, but that should come through peaceful means, not through violence. And that’s what our message is.

Very on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand. He even talks of a more representative and democratic government, being unwilling to admit that the current government is neither. And McClellan adopts Karimov’s characterization of any opposition to his dictatorship as terrorist. As for change coming through peaceful means, I repeat: boils its enemies alive. Not much restraint there.

This revolution, or whatever it is, hasn’t been assigned a color yet. Where’s Tom Ridge when you need him? What color is boiled human flesh?

The deputy leader of the state of Bremen, Peter Gloystein, has had to resign after pouring a magnum of champagne over a homeless man. He said it was a joke. Maybe it’s just the way he tells it.

We’re not electing Mr. Peepers to go there and just be really happy, and drinking tea with their pinkies up

In the committee meeting on John Bolton, Sen. George Allen said — and it was made even more obnoxious by his delivery than simple words on a computer screen can convey — “We are not electing Mr. Congeniality. We do not need Mr. Milquetoast in the United Nations. We’re not electing Mr. Peepers [a 1950’s sitcom — I never heard of it either] to go there and just be really happy, and drinking tea with their pinkies up.” Folks, this man is on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and that’s his idea of what diplomacy is like, just a bunch of gay English guys, maybe Eric Blore and Edward Everett Horton.

Having trouble meeting its recruiting targets, the Army will allow suckers recruits to sign up for only 15 months of active duty instead of 4 years, and they promise, cross their hearts, not to extend their tours of duty, they would never do that, how could you even think such a thing?

From the Afghan protests, these students, including one no doubt shouting “Death to America” whilst sporting a backwards baseball cap or possibly just trying to get a hotdog from the vendor, object to the insult to the Holly Quran.



And, not to sound like a right-winger or anything, but is this really the best way to protest the insult to the Holly Quran?



We are informed by multiple news sources that desecrating the Holly Koran is punishable by death in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And I seem to remember that under the Taliban... yes, I’ve looked it up and I posted this back in 1997... recycling paper was made illegal, to prevent Korans being recycled for more profane uses.

I am asking that all our friends around the world reject incitement to violence by those who would mischaracterize our intentions

Adding to your slang vocabulary, just a little service I perform here: it seems that in Britain, gangs film themselves beating people up and this is called “happy slapping.” Also, Tony Blair today complained about yobs and hoodies. Hoodies are sweatshirt jackets with hoods, but possibly also the people who wear them.

A small bit of journalistic malpractice at the NYT. I was going to pass on to you a short piece that appeared in the print version about a Seminole County, Fla. Republican party chairman who sued a woman because he “said his campaign to head the state party was sabotaged by a letter falsely accusing him of having been married six times. The right number, he said, is five.” But when I went looking for it, I found that to create that cute little story, the NYT had edited out the detail that she also accused him (falsely, according to the judge) of abusing one of those wives.

It will be fun to watch George Galloway, MP take on Norm Coleman, who has revived the charge that Galloway was bribed by Saddam Hussein with oil-for-food money. This was not what I meant last week when I warned against identifying too closely with Gorgeous George, since I have no idea if it’s true or not, or whether the new evidence is as obviously manufactured as the last was. Galloway says his first words will be that it’s too bad they were only willing to hear from him after declaring his guilt. Perhaps his second words should be to challenge Coleman to take it outside — where Coleman doesn’t have the protection against libel suits he does inside the Senate.

Another 3 Afghans died in the rioting over the alleged Koran-flushing incident, making 7 so far, and those are government figures so you know it’s much higher. Condi Rice made a statement today said that the US military is investigating, which I know reassures me no end, and condemned actions that might have happened: “Disrespect for the Holy Koran is not now, nor has it ever been, nor will it ever be, tolerated by the United States. We honor the sacred books of all the world’s great religions.” Human beings of all the world’s great religions, that’s another matter. Also, what’s the threshold for a “great” religion? Do we honor Dianetics, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Chicken Soup for the Soul and The Tao of Pooh? She concluded with this sentence, whose precise meaning is a little hard to unpack: “I am asking that all our friends around the world reject incitement to violence by those who would mischaracterize our intentions.” Fortunately, that appeal is addressed to all our friends around the world, so only Tony Blair has to decipher it, after he’s done ridding Britain of the scourge of hoodies.

Surrounded by people that he selects

Movie trivia: the actor who provided the voices for various robot butlers and computers in Woody Allen’s Sleeper is Douglas Rain, the voice of HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Speaking of robot voices, First Draft has an excellent and entertaining run-down of the Bolton hearings

This party is schizo, seriously. Putting a guy on a box with electrodes attached to his testicles and a hood over his head, beating him bloody, flushing his holy book down the toilet, that’s all in good fun and merely “aggressive,” but calling a guy into a room, making him sit in a chair in a suit and talk to some hairdos about his past, that’s unconscionable torment beyond human capacity to bear. Pick it, wingnuts. You’re either the party of hardass buttkickers, who don’t mind siccing a dog on somebody to get some unreliable info, or you’re the party of screaming little girls who cry when somebody says bad words to them. You can’t be both.

Murkowski at those hearings: “The president deserves to be surrounded by people that he selects.” It’s all about the group sex with these people, isn’t it? [For those not in the know, or reading this 5 years from now because you googled “group sex,” Bolton is alleged to have gone to group-sex clubs].

How to make a member of the House of Lords spit out his soup

The supplemental military spending bill which just passed the Senate includes all sorts of goodies, such as giving the feds back the old McCarren-Walter ability to exclude foreigners from the US merely because of their speech or writings, and, on the other side, a ban on the government spending money to torture people, including non-Americans, who Alberto Gonzales claimed had no constitutional right not to be tortured. No doubt more details will be revealed in the days to come, and no one will be more surprised by them than the hundred senators who voted for the bill without reading it.

Oklahoma’s lower house passed a (non-binding) resolution demanding that libraries hide away books with homosexual content in adult-only sections. The resolution’s sponsor, Eagle Forum fixture and homophobe Sally Kern, the wife of a Baptist pastor, was especially incensed by a children’s book, King & King, about a prince whose mother the Queen tells him he must marry, but he’s “never cared much for princesses”... Ages 6 & up, according to Amazon.

Afghanistan erupts in rioting over claims that Americans flushed Korans down the toilets in Guantanamo as part of their sophisticated interrogation tactics. The story is no sillier than similar rumors that started the Indian Mutiny in 1857, but I tend to doubt it. Americans have much more respect for... plumbing.

Karzai said the riots were proof that freedom of speech and democracy were taking hold in Afghanistan, an exercise in making lemonade out of lemons spoiled only by the addition to that beverage of the blood spilled from at least 4 protesters shot to death by Afghan police, and yes I just nauseated myself with that imagery too. Karzai also gave this as another reason why the American occupation must go on and on and on.

A London Times story begins by asking “Is Kirsty Sword Gusmao the first woman to unbutton her shirt in the House of Lords dining room? It is hard to be sure. What is clear is that when she did so to breast-feed her five-month-old son, their lordships noticed.” The breasts of Ms Gusmao, the Australian wife of East Timor’s president, turn out to be the least interesting things about her in this fascinating article.

Knowledge is power, and yet the “president” is a moron. Go figure.

The US Court of Appeals for DC rules, unanimously yet, that Dick Cheney can keep the records of his energy task force secret, saying in its opinion that “The president must be free to seek confidential information from many sources, both inside the government and outside.” Why must he? In a democracy where the government is theoretically accountable to the people, the people must have the necessary information to judge the actions of the government, but the Bushies want to preserve a monopolistic hold on that information. Judge Raymond Randolph’s unstated assumptions about how executive functions should be carried out — “free” not just to seek information, but free from accountability — are anti-democratic; they assume that a president is like a king.

Randolph also cites the need to preserve the “separation of powers,” but c’mon, no actual powers are threatened in any way, except in the sense that “knowledge is power.” This is about data, not power. What the Court’s ruling actually preserves is separation of information, since Congress will be asked to vote on the administration’s proposals without having access to the data the task force had, or the ability to judge whether that data might have been distorted by having come only from representatives of industry, unchallenged.

Much the same thing went on in the court. The judges ruled that the plaintiffs hadn’t proven that the energy companies’ flacks had acted as de facto members of the secret task force, writing an energy policy to suit themselves, but wouldn’t let the plaintiffs have access to the names of those people in order to prove that they were. I’m not even sure the court itself was given the task force’s records.

In the Bush administration, knowledge is power, and they’re both fossil-fuel based.

Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition

Spain’s stock market regulator has ruled that directors of corporations must disclose not only their own economic dealings, but also those of their spouses, children and, oh yes, mistresses, boy toys, gay lovers. Twice a year.

The invaluable National Security Archives has documents about Luis Posada Carrile, including FBI reports connecting him to the 1976 plane bombing, CIA records showing his relationship to the Agency.

The Taliban say they don’t need any steenking amnesty. The head of the Afghan committee overseeing the amnesty suggested yesterday that it be expanded to include all Taliban, right up to Mullah Omar, if they lay down their arms. But Pentagon spokesmodel Col. James Yonts responded, “Our position all along has been that those guilty of serious crimes must be responsible for their actions. We believe the government of Afghanistan understands and supports that.” So now an American colonel can over-rule the Afghan government and inform it of what it “understands and supports.” In the chain of command, the “sovereign” Afghan government must be the equivalent of, what, a corporal?

Tierney outdoofuses Brooks

John Tierney’s NYT column today displayed such a level of assholery that I feel compelled to violate my usual policy of ignoring the paleo-pundts (every so often I start writing a withering refutation of something David Brooks has said, but I always delete it because life is too short and Brooks is too self-evidently a doofus). Tierney says that suicide bombings in the Middle East are a dog-bites-man story about which there’s nothing new to say and when you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all and he always gets bored and stops reading before the end and the media should just stop reporting them except for the “box score.” Just two points: 1) What is new in each new attack is the unique individuality of the human beings who are its victims; Tierney is treating those victims with the same callous disregard as do the terrorists; 2) Tierney makes the same assumption the terrorists do, that publicity for suicide bombings serve their ends. A less pessimistic view of human nature would be that viewing scenes of carnage would produce disgust for the people who caused them and an increased determination to defeat them.

British archaeologists have found a 2,500-year old leather shoe. Lace-up, size 9 or 10. This is an incredible find, given that half the stuff you’re served in British restaurants looks and tastes like a 2,500-year old leather shoe.

The King of Jordan will pardon Chalabi, without even asking him to return the money he embezzled.

Bush in Georgia: What I find on his mind is very refreshing

This story, sent in by an alert reader, about a man who changed his name to Jesus Christ and now can’t get a driver’s license, is full of great quotes, like “Christ is moving to West Virginia to enjoy a slower lifestyle.” His lawyer says, “This all started with him expressing his faith and his respect and love for Jesus Christ. Now he needs to document it for legal reasons.” And “Christ is not speaking to the press at this time.”

Which reminds me: yesterday I kept checking the White House website for material from Chimpy’s trip to Russia, but there was none. Bush, who resembles Christ only inasmuch as he also got his job through nepotism, wasn’t speaking to the press either. Or at all, in public. He may claim to be promoting democracy in Russia, but the only Russian he’s willing to promote it to is Vladimir Putin. One man, one vote.

Happily for this blog, Bush is speaking in public in Georgia, land of many stairs,



alongside the country’s president, whose name (Mikhail Saakashvili) he either can’t remember or can’t pronounce, but with whom he’s been having frank and sophisticated discussions:

We had a very frank discussion. That’s what I like about the President. He speaks his mind. If he’s got something on his mind, he’ll tell you. What I find on his mind is very refreshing; he loves democracy and loves freedom, and he loves the people of Georgia.

Asked about the continuing presence of Russian military bases in Georgia, Bush said, well, something:

So this isn’t the first time I’ve had this conversation with President Putin on this issue. -- (inaudible) -- an agreement in place -- (inaudible) -- said to the Russians, we want to work with the government to fulfill -- (inaudible) -- and I think that is a commitment, an important commitment for the people of Georgia to hear, and it’s a -- it shows there’s grounds for work to get this issue resolved.

Guess the press conference went into a tunnel.

It suddenly dawns on George that he should have listened more carefully to what Condi was saying about there being two different Georgias

Compromising its principles

Eli at Left I on the News has said almost everything I would have about anti-Castro terrorist Luis Posada Carriles and the NYT’s front-page story about him today, which displays a reflexive instinct — call it a Cold War Tourette’s — to challenge anything Cuba says just because Cuba says it, right down to questioning in its headline whether this admitted bomber of hotels and commercial airplanes is actually a terrorist. The flip side of this Cold War Tourette’s is a refusal to take the United States at any but its own self-examination. The NYT’s Tim Weiner writes, “A grant of asylum could invite charges that the Bush administration is compromising its principle that no nation should harbor suspected terrorists.” Its principle? That’s like Bush & Rumsfeld claiming that the US doesn’t practice torture, except for those dozens and dozens of rotten-apple cases, which don’t count (to quote the Daily Show, “Just because torturing prisoners is something we did, it doesn’t mean it’s something we would do.”). The US has been a safe haven for nearly 50 years for violent anti-Castro Cubans, not to mention the Nazis recruited by the OSS and CIA, Haitian and Salvadoran death squad leaders, Vietnamese war criminals, including the one who shot the prisoner in the famous photo (he owned a pizza parlor in Virginia) etc etc.

About Posada, the Bushies would rather look incompetent than stick to their so-called principles. “Roger F. Noriega, the top State Department official for Western Hemisphere affairs, said he did not even know whether Mr. Posada was in the country.” Sure you don’t, Rog, sure you don’t.

Elsewhere on the Monday NYT front page is a story about the lax security at chemical plants in New Jersey, in which the reporter is horrified that he was able to take pictures of those plants while driving by in his car without being stopped and interrogated. So now reporters want to be harassed when they’re taking pictures? There’s no pleasing some people.

Condi Rice takes a leaf from Richard Nixon’s Big Book o’ Stonewalling, saying that giving Senate Democrats the information they want about John Bolton’s distortions of intelligence re Syria and Cuba would have a “chilling effect” on internal debates. How are Bolton’s qualifications supposed to be evaluated if the last 4 years of his life is ignored? Rice also says that she “does not believe these requests to be specifically tied to the issues being deliberated by the Committee in connection with the nomination.” It’s not really her decision what evidence is necessary. Committee chair Richard Lugar also refused to back up the Democrats’ requests, saying that the documents weren’t essential, and again, that’s not his call to make.

The Sunni who turned down the cabinet post of human rights minister this weekend, Hashim al-Shibli, says he first heard about his appointment in a tv news report, which suggests Jaafari was trying to bounce him into the job by handing him a fait accompli. Not very deftly handled.

Ariel Sharon has announced that he won’t release 400 Palestinian prisoners as promised, because Abu Mazen hasn’t done enough against Hamas. Since those 400 men were not convicted by any court of any crime, and since their release is being predicated on Mazen’s actions, the correct word for them is not prisoner but hostage. You could look it up.

For students of blogging’s effects on the art of writing, the term for what I did in the last sentence, which I just made up, is “the sarcastic hyperlink.”

Sharon says “Everyone asks me to strengthen Abu Mazen, but I tell them, not at the expense of Israeli lives.” Any sane person would recognize that undermining Abu Mazen will have a far higher cost in Israeli lives.

The Russian spirit never died out

Bush, speaking in Moscow of World War II, says “The people of Russia suffered incredible hardship, and yet the Russian spirit never died out,” adding, “Not like the fucking French.”

Bush is of course in Moscow to celebrate the anniversary of V-E Day. The Moscow police are advising everyone else to celebrate by staying home because there will be “frequent document checks and other unprecedented security measures”. The Russian spirit really does never die out. This picture of a freedom-loving Katyusha rocket, ready for its role in the parade, is from the Moscow Times.



Shrub failed to bring up that whole occupation-of-the-Baltics thing with Putin, or Putin’s contention that the collapse of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” and what I especially enjoy is the spectacle of Stephen Hadley (who has Condi Rice’s old job) first refusing even to say whether Bush agreed with that assessment or not, then calling the reporter back to say that of course the end of Communism was a, ya know, good thing.

The WaPo gets some reactions by other members of Congress to poor Tom DeLay’s ethics problems. But while it contextualizes Barney Frank’s comments by noting that he was “embroiled in an ethics contretemps of his own in the 1980s,” they quote Henry Hyde without mentioning any of his “youthful indiscretions.”

The world’s tyrants learned a lesson; George, well, not so much

In the Netherlands, we finally get an answer to the question how dead does an American soldier have to be before Bush visits his grave: 60 years.



Naturally, he tried once again to equate the struggle with fascism with the fight against Al Qaeda, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. Evidently, they’re both about freedom: “The world’s tyrants learned a lesson: There is no power like the power of freedom and no soldier as strong as a soldier who fights for that freedom.” Then, to celebrate the power of freedom properly, he went to Russia, whose Red Army killed 3/4 of the Germans killed during World War II, under the leadership of Josef Stalin.

In Russia, Putin let Chimpy drive his, uh, vintage 1956 Volga. “I’m having so much fun. We’re going for another lap,” Bush said, adding, “I’m an excellent driver, excellent driver. Pootie Poot lets me drive slow on the driveway. But not on Monday, definitely not on Monday.”

Bush exercises the presidential ability to heal the lame and the halt

Number 3, number 389, what’s the difference?

The reason why the supposed number 3 man in Al Qaeda with the weird skin condition, who was captured last week by Pakistani agents wearing burqas, according to a BBC report which fails to say if they were men or women, and who was then beaten and drugged, has failed to give up any usable intelligence, is that he’s not particularly high up in AQ at all. The FBI still — I mean STILL — hasn’t figured out how Arab names work, exactly the problem that allowed some of the 9/11 hijackers into the country, and this guy has a similar name to another Libyan terrorist’s. “When The Sunday Times contacted a senior FBI counter-terrorism official for information about the importance of the detained man, he sent material on al-Liby, the wrong man.”

For those who wondered about my overly succinct dismissal of George Galloway, this post at Crooked Timber (for which, thanks to Tex) exactly matches my views of the man, but brings more knowledge to bear (hey, I live in California, what would I know about demagogic politicians!).

A little test: see how many news reports on the bombings in Burma, like this one from the AP, also mention that the military is using chemical weapons on rebels.

Stronger than the will of an empire

Bush is in Latvia, talking up the Baltic love of freedom and democracy. Putin will not be best pleased. Of course Chimpy being Chimpy, for him the highest proof of the love of freedom is being willing to impose it on other nations at gunpoint, so he keeps praising the Baltic states’ membership in the Coalition of the Willing (COW):

The Latvian, Estonian, and Lithuanian people showed that the love of liberty is stronger than the will of an empire. And today you’re standing for liberty beyond your borders, so that others do not suffer the injustices you have known.

But when the Baltic presidents try to mention all the things the US did to stand for liberty in the Baltics from 1945 to 1991, all they can come up with is that the US never recognized the occupation. Way to stand for liberty beyond your borders, America! Of course Bush’s father tried very hard not to recognize their independence either, saying it would “contribute to anarchy” to do so, so really we were just trying not to recognize Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia at all, like avoiding eye contact when you run into someone on the street you owe money to.

Here’s another sentence from that speech: “Our journey from national independence to equal injustice [sic] included the enslavement of millions, and a four-year civil war.” That’s not my sic, that’s the White House website’s.

There are a couple of moves to appease Putin, including a coded call for the Baltics to stop treating their ethnic Russian populations as second-class citizens. And he insists that democracies aren’t a threat to Russia:

Stable, prosperous democracies are good neighbors, trading in freedom, and posing no threat to anyone.

Just can’t think of a stable, prosperous democracy that’s a threat to other nations, huh?

The United States has free and peaceful nations to the north and south of us. We do not consider ourselves to be encircled; we consider ourselves to be blessed.

You’ll notice he doesn’t ask if Canada and Mexico consider themselves blessed.

In another event, Shrubya goes into student-of-history mode, saying he hopes that “we’re able to learn the lessons from that painful history [the occupation of the Baltics], that tyranny is evil and people deserve to live in a free society.” If he taught history, the final would be really easy. Also, “never again should we allow Jews and gypsies to be exterminated and the world not pay close attention to it.” What more could they ask for?

Humility is something I work on every day

Tom DeLay spoke on the subject of humility at a National Day of Prayer service (I assume all of you who are Americans prayed yesterday, I’m pretty sure it was mandatory). The NYT reports

Mr. DeLay received a standing ovation for his talk. Asked afterward why he chose the topic, he replied smugly, “Humility is something I work on every day.”

I may have added a word to that excerpt.

In the world in brief section Friday, the NYT has what I can only assume was an ironic juxtaposition of two stories from South Africa, one that the government is getting annoyed with criticism of radiation leaks from a nuclear research facility and thinking about introducing legislation to ensure people “speak responsibly on sensitive matters,” the sort of legislation Peter Hain probably remembers well, and a story that SA’s health minister defended her remarks that garlic is an effective treatment for AIDS.

The British election does not bode well for the Northern Irish peace process. David Trimble, the voice of moderation-compared-to-Ian-Paisley, has been defeated for reelection and his party is down to one seat. Paisley was crowing today that “The day has come when we cannot tolerate Sinn Fein/IRA any more,” Ian Paisley being renowned for his tolerance. Sinn Fein is the second largest Northern Ireland party, after Paisley’s DUP, with 5 elected MPs, up from 4. The new Northern Irish Secretary, poor sod, is an interesting choice: Peter Hain, who has been thoroughly assimilated into Blairism, but is a South African and in the 1970s was a prominent anti-apartheid activist in Britain (he had emigrated to Britain with his parents, also anti-apartheidists).

More on the British elections: move along, move along, nothing to see here

Blair again acknowledges the depth of unpopularity of his Iraq policy, but adds “I also know — and believe — that after this election people want to move on.” This is a simulacrum of contriteness, lacking any actual contrition. Since he’s not planning to withdraw British troops, what does he mean by “moving on”? He means that he will stop responding to criticisms, so opponents of the war might as well stop making them; the “move on” formula benefits only Tony Blair. It lacks the smug triumphalism of Bush’s “We had an accountability moment, and that’s called the 2004 elections,” but its practical meaning amounts to the same thing.

During the election campaign, Blair committed several crimes against democracy — misdemeanors rather than felonies, but not insignificant ones. American politicians pay lip service to the idea that “every vote counts.” They don’t mean it, but it is important that they say it. Blair, on the other hand, told voters who might want to send him a message that a vote for the Liberal Democrats was a “wasted vote.” And, worried about a projected low turnout — and in fact Labour’s 36% tally was less than the 39% of the electorate who didn’t vote at all, which is a first in British electoral history — he insisted that the election might come down to a few thousand votes in a handful of seats, which while accurate is not something a leader in a democratic, one person one vote, country should say. And finally, by the end of the campaign he was refusing to engage with disaffected voters. In the BBC’s “Question Time” and elsewhere, I saw him shrug when confronted by people angry about Iraq, saying that he’d already made his case and they were either convinced or they weren’t. Which might be reasonable to argue, and indeed the people I saw didn’t look convinceable, but a candidate in a democracy doesn’t get to give up on trying to convince every single voter. It shows a lack of faith in democracy to do so.

The British voters accomplished exactly what Michael Howard told them to do, and what they wanted to do: they wiped the smirk off Tony Blair’s face. So the system works.

Indeed, the expression on Blair’s face last night, in the finest traditions of representative government, precisely mirrored the mood of the voters: upset, uncertain, dour, queasy and sullen. I’m telling you, the system works!

British election results: “I hope in my heart that one day the prime minister may be able to say sorry”

I’m sorry I forgot to post a prediction about the British election results, since it would have been pretty accurate; you’ll just have to take my word for it. Labour won what would be a landslide in most countries, but is such a drop from its previous two election victories that it looks very much like a defeat, and might well have been an actual defeat if there had been a credible alternative, if anyone could have imagined either the Tories or the LibDems in power without, respectively, cringing or laughing. The last 3 or 4 years were the time for a push by the LibDems to displace the Tories as the primary opposition party, as they already are in some parts of the country, but there was no such push, and the electoral system is stacked against them, so that even in seats where they increased their vote, they mostly succeeded in cutting into Labour majorities and handing those seats to Tories.

The Tories ran quite a few gay candidates (although not, as far as I know, any lesbians, but don’t quote me on that), evidently without scaring the blue-haired old ladies or upsetting the horses. Really, it was a non-issue. I’m not sure yet how many were run in seats where they had a chance of winning (although to be fair, first-time candidates are not usually given safe seats but are expected to be seasoned by losing their first race), or how many did win; I’ll try to update when all the results are in (or someone could drop me an email, hint hint). They also ran more ethnic minorities than usual, and Adam Afriyie won in Windsor, the first ever black Tory MP. However Labour’s Oona King, who is black, a woman, and Jewish, was defeated by George Galloway of the Respect party, who is fiercely anti-war, the most left-wing member of the new Parliament, but absolutely not someone we want on our side.

In his remarkably glum victory speech, Blair admitted that the country wanted the result it got, for Labour to win but with a much reduced majority (which is a way of saying that those who switched their votes to the LibDems didn’t really mean it, which is true, but he shouldn’t be the one to say it). Another way of saying that is that voters wanted to send Blair a message not to govern so far to the right of the party of which he is supposed to be the leader.

I predict that Blair will be replaced as party leader and prime minister not less than a year but not more than two years from now; the only question is whether he’ll jump or be pushed. In his own constituency of Sedgefield, 14 people ran against him, and he had to stand there with all of them as the results were read out, including the Monster Raving Loony Party candidate and the former topless model whose real name is probably not Cherri Blairout Gilham — that’s her in the hat Tony is trying so hard not to look at....



and a man named Reg Keys, who scored an astonishing 10% of the vote on an anti-war platform, after his 20-year old son, a soldier, was killed in Iraq. After the count, he gave a speech and Tony had to stand there listening. Here’s the bit I heard, before the BBC got bored and switched away: “If this war had been justified by international law I would have grieved and not campaigned. If weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq — again I would have grieved, not campaigned. ... I hope in my heart that one day the prime minister may be able to say sorry.”

Mr. Terminator, tear down this wall pink ribbon

As I hinted yesterday, Bush is heading into a minor shitstorm by attending the 60th anniversary of V-E Day in Moscow. It now seems he secretly tried to get Russia to repudiate before then the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 and the subsequent Russian annexation of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. Since Bush is going to Moscow by way of Latvia, he’s right in the middle of this, and he has written a letter to the president of Latvia using the word “occupation,” which has pissed the Russians off no end. Russia has not only refused to apologize, it is insisting that there was no annexation, that it was by mutual agreement.

As part of his campaign for Tom DeLay-style redistricting in California, Governor Terminator went to Elk Grove, a Sacramento suburb parts of which are in two different districts, put up a big red length of ribbon at that dividing line down a street showing how cruelly and wantonly divided Elk Grovians had been by this senseless act of redistricting. He then tore the ribbon, to symbolize the reuniting of Elk Grove, like the breaching of the Berlin Wall, except that this wall was entirely fictional. Also, he went to the wrong street, 1/8th of a mile away from the real line, which may have been a deliberate mistake, because where he went was in a gated community, where the protesters who normally follow him around these days can be kept out.



Evidently Schwarzenegger is planning to divide California into districts without the use of lines. I can’t wait to see him try.

Emulating popular culture

Evidently today is the National Day of Prayer. George “Hey Laura, This Milk Tastes Kind of Funny” Bush had a bunch of ministers of various religions over to the White House to pray at him. It didn’t help. I’d like to have seen the look on the Catholic priest’s face (Bush called him a pastor) when Bush told him, “Kind of sounded more like a Baptist preacher to me.”

Bush declared, “From the landing of the pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, to the launch of the American Revolution, the men and women who founded this nation in freedom relied on prayer to protect and preserve it.” Also, smallpox-infected blankets. Of course, he couldn’t resist mentioning that God supports our side in its more... vigorous endeavors: “Today, we pray for the troops who are defending our freedom [which he had just explained comes from God] against determined enemies around the globe.” Excellent plan, I’m sure our determined enemies didn’t think of that.

But what does God think about freedom to engage in sexually suggestive cheerleading? As you know, a bill to prohibit such foul practices passed the lower house of the Texas legislature 65-56. Cathie Adams, president of the Texas Eagle Forum, worries that “High school cheerleading was starting to emulate popular culture.” Could be worse: could be the other way around. Although it might make the next Star Wars movie more watchable.

Something is seriously wrong with the condition of Britain today. First I saw this image of a ballot box on the Tory party website, looking like it had been dropped from an airplane.



But then I saw this picture, on the Labour website, of Tony & Cherie Blair casting their ballots, evidently in a barn in Appalachia.



And an email sent out by the LibDems this morning pleaded, “If you are in a part of the country which is forecast bad weather for today, remember that you only get this opportunity to directly affect the direction of our country once every four or five years.” So vote for better weather.

Accounting and accountability

So while Congress did vote for $200m in aid to Palestine, much of it somehow wound up in Israeli hands: $20m to the Israeli electricity company, $50m for checkpoints, etc. At this point I would start a sentence “And to add insult to injury...” but there are too many ways to finish that sentence, too many insults. Very little money will go to the elected Palestinian government, but will be disbursed by non-governmental groups, preferably Zionist ones: for example, $2m goes to Hadassah. Another insult: $5m will go to audit the Palestinian budget; I don’t read that as meaning the audit will track only how American money is spent, but as a top-to-bottom audit. Or possibly it will be a thorough audit of precisely how much insult has been added to injury.

And you should all be ashamed of yourselves for the thought that just went through your heads: many accountants are not Jewish.

The Marine in the shooting of an unarmed, wounded Iraqi prisoner of war, the “He’s fucking faking he’s dead. He faking he’s fucking dead” incident (previous posts here and here) has been cleared by the Marine Corps (actually I thought he was cleared months ago) despite actual videotape of the shooting. Also, the LA Times tells us, as if to jog our memories, “The incident later was the basis for an episode of the pro-military television show "JAG" on CBS. In that story, the Marine was found not guilty.” Maybe the Marines put the wrong tape in the VCR.

Actually, most LA Times stories are assigned on the basis of things the editor saw on after-school specials and reruns of Matlock.

So with that, the rejection of Lynndie England’s guilty plea (which means that she will return to her military duties), and the whitewash of the Giuliana Sgrena shooting, it’s been quite a week for accountability. Also, Rumsfeld and Bush still have their jobs.

Options

Evidently a large number of veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars are coming home, driving really fast, and dying in crashes.

Next week George “The Horse Whisperer” Bush will attend a military parade in Red Square celebrating the 60th anniversary of V-E Day, or, as the Baltic states and possibly one or two other countries think of it, the start of 45 years of subjugation by the Red Army. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, in a Rummyesque move, told them to suck it up: “when some now argue over whether we did or did not occupy other countries, I feel like asking them: ‘And what would have become of you if we hadn’t broken the back of fascism - would you still exist as a people?’” Isn’t it nice to have options?

Speaking of options, in India, a 19 (or 22)-year old nurse was raped by an orderly, who gouged out one of her eyes in the process. Before he was sentenced, he asked the court if he could marry his victim, so the court had her hauled in to answer this beyond-obscene (but not uncommon) proposition.

She said no.

Still speaking of options, the British people will be choosing a new government in a few hours. Under Mr. Blair, the British political system has become increasingly presidential in tone and function, but not electorally. No one gets to vote directly on who will be prime minister, which creates some anomalies. For example, it has become increasingly clear that he lied to Parliament about the legal advice he had on the legality of the war in Iraq, but voters in Labour-held seats wishing to punish Blair for that would have to vote against their Members of Parliament, precisely the people Blair lied to.

A response to the infidel pesh merga forces which surrendered themselves to the crusaders and became a thorn in the side of Muslims

The Tory policy generator.

Given the repetitious nature of events in Iraq, I feel justified in recycling part of my Feb. 28 post, with the number updated:

in Iraq today anti-queuing militants struck again, killing at least 46 men applying to join the police. 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.

Says the group responsible, “This operation is in response to our brothers who are being tortured in your prisons, and in response to the infidel pesh merga forces which surrendered themselves to the crusaders and became a thorn in the side of Muslims.” Somewhere there’s a computer program, just like the Tory policy generator, that writes these messages. Surely no human could.

The attack came one day after the new interim, provisional, probationary, contingent, temporary, transient Iraqi government was sworn in, and one day after the US announced yet again that the insurgents were demoralized.

If the ethics of perfidy don’t work, why is Chalabi in office?

The WaPo characterizes these comments by Iraqi PM Jafari, addressed to Sunni insurgents as “conciliatory”: “Come back to our people with atonement and apology... The dialogue of words will take you to what the language of bullets and the ethics of perfidy failed to do.” A great big sloppy kiss, that is, straight out of the John Bolton school of diplomacy. I can’t find the whole speech, so I have only the word of the Post and a few other papers that it was specifically Sunni insurgents he meant, as opposed to the Sunni politicians who refused to join his administration, so that a Cabinet was sworn in today missing 7 members. There was a deadline of early May (the 7th?) after which, if no cabinet had been formed, a new prime minister would need to be chosen. Hard to see how a cabinet without proper ministers of defense, oil, etc counts.

A measure setting stricter standards for driver’s licenses went through the House, attached by James Sensenbrenner to a measure to fund the military in Iraq. No one has attacked him for this tactic, designed to circumvent a proper debate, because this sort of blackmail goes on in the legislative branch all the time. “Nice little supplemental appropriations bill ya got here, shame if something wuz to happen to it.” Without extortion, nothing would get done in Congress. Just wanted to point out, in the midst of all the recent talk about filibusters, that the normal processes of law-making would make Tony Soprano turn away in disgust.

Oh, and Sensenbrenner also snuck through a provision removing the right of habeas corpus for non-citizens.

A cunning plan

From the Daily Telegraph: “China offered the people of Taiwan a pair of giant pandas yesterday... But it was not clear last night if Taiwan would accept the pandas, with some members of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party denouncing it as a ploy to undermine Taiwan’s sovereignty.” I’m a little foggy on how they’d do this, but they may be super-ninja pandas.

Ann Widdecombe, Tory MP and former Employment Minister, among other things, was asked in a phone-in program how she would improve the life of the (woman) caller, said, “I would buy you a cat.”

Brazil has rejected American AIDS money, finding it to have moralistic strings attached to it. The US wanted every group receiving money, including those which work with prostitutes, to condemn prostitution.

On its opening weekend in Britain, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” earned... £4.2m.

Former Polish military ruler Wojciech Jaruzelski reveals that Erich Honecker was a lousy kisser.

Shout, show, shove, shoot

Health & Human Services Secretary Mike “Pull the Plug” Leavitt suggested that one way to save money in the Medicare program would be getting people in the program to make out living wills.

Well, I’ve been reading the Pentagon whitewash (pdf). The WaPo notes that it was posted “in a form that allowed outside computer specialists to manipulate it and reveal the deleted portions.” That arcane bit of computer “specialist” knowledge, I can reveal to you now, is called cut-and-paste.

The rules of engagement for the Iraqi checkpoint were called “shout, show, shove, shoot,” meaning a car would be successively hit by a searchlight, a green laser pointer, warning shots, and disabling shots. Sounds like a night at the strip club.

The report admits failing to have done proper forensic analysis of the scene, because when they tried, someone threw a hand grenade at them. “As a result, the forensic studies of the car could not be as conclusive as they normally would be.”

The checkpoint had no radar gun, but one of the soldiers was a NYC cop, “trained in vehicle speed estimation.” I’d accept that in lieu of a radar gun... if not for his conflict of interest.

The report confirmed something I knew about way back on March 10, but haven’t heard another word about since: the roadblock was set up around a curve which is less than, ya know, optimal if you want people to actually see your roadblock before you start shooting them. It’s a roadblock, not a speed-trap.

When oddly large burritos are outlawed, only oddly large outlaws will have oddly large burritos

The American whitewash of the shooting of Italian journalist/hostage Giuliana Sgrena’s car repeats the claim that it was driving at 50 mph. I haven’t read the report but... did the hastily set up roadblock come equipped with a radar gun? Incidentally, one part of the report I’m looking forward to seeing describes for the first time the US military’s rules of engagement at roadblocks; it was one of the ineptly redacted sections.

Once again, the Kuwaiti parliament fails to enfranchise women. I’m so glad we fought Gulf War I, the war to make the world safe for feudalism, to restore that country’s “freedom.”

In response to a British academic boycott of an Israeli university connected to the “College of Judea and Samaria” in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank (talk about a land-grant college!), Israel has decided to upgrade the college to a university. That’ll show ‘em.

Ariel Sharon says, as if it were his decision to make, that Hamas can’t participate in Palestinian elections unless they disarm.

A washing machine has been developed in Spain to deal with the problem of husbands not doing their share of the chores: using fingerprint-recognition technology, it will not allow the same person to push the start button twice in a row.

Why obesity is a danger to our young:

A call about a possible weapon at a middle school prompted police to put armed officers on rooftops, close nearby streets and lock down the school.

Someone called authorities Thursday after seeing a boy carrying something long and wrapped into Marshall Junior High. [in Clovis, New Mexico]

The drama ended two hours later when the suspicious item was identified as a 30-inch burrito filled with steak, guacamole, lettuce, salsa and jalapenos and wrapped inside tin foil and a white T-shirt.

The burrito was part of Morrissey’s extra-credit assignment to create commercial advertising for a product. "We had to make up a product and it could have been anything. I made up a restaurant that specialized in oddly large burritos," Morrissey said.

In France, a man sued his ex-wife & her lover for compensation for the time he spent with the 13-year old girl he thought was his daughter. The court ordered them to pay him €23,000, almost the cost of the personality transplant he so obviously needs, because “It has not been proved that he would have voluntarily carried out his natural duties knowing that he was not the father.” To be fair, the ex-wife had married the lover and asked for legal paternity (and custody) to be changed. €8,000 of the award was for moral and psychological damage. For the non-father, of course, not for the girl.

Speaking of 13-year olds being treated as symbols rather than human beings by those who are supposed to be taking care of them, the judge in Florida has ruled that that 13-year old may have her abortion after all.

Cheng Yizhong, the editor of a newspaper in Guangdong, China, which broke stories about SARS and about a fatal police beating, was to be given a press freedom prize by UNESCO. But the Chinese government told him not to go. Not big on irony, the Chinese government.

That led me to check the availability of “Whatever It Is, I’m Against It” in China, through this helpful site, but its connection to China is down right now. I have had one or two hits from China in the past, but not in quite some time.

Vote Tory and win a date with a dentist

In the British elections, Michael Howard has taken the Clinton idea of running on small policies to laughable extremes. Sez Howard, “People don’t want a date with destiny, they just want a date with the dentist.” Insert your own oral sex/laughing gas joke here. One of his major platform planks is keeping hospitals cleaner. Possibly by closing the National Health Service and sending poor patients to die in the streets, but at least the hospitals will be clean. The latest Tory email (I also signed up for the LibDems, which sent just 1 email the whole campaign, but couldn’t find a place on the Labour site at which to do so, or indeed at the Monster Raving Loony Party’s site) promises that if the Tories win, “on 9th May plans to prevent police officers having to fill in a form every time they stop a yob in the street would be unveiled; and on 6th June NHS trusts will have agreed to put matrons in charge of delivering cleaner hospitals.” They’re also setting their sights on disruptive 8-year olds, wanting to give schools unfettered power to expel unruly students. Here’s a poster they’re running in Scotland (where they currently have 1 MP out of 72).



England being England, Howard has begun speaking in rhyming couplets:

People have had enough of spin and smirk;
they just want someone who’ll make things work.

Mostly, though, it’s all immigrant-bashing, all the time. If you saw Michael Howard on C-SPAN yesterday, you saw a questioner get him to say that he would have kept his own grandparents (Romanian Jews) from immigrating to Britain. However, there are is some sort of invisible line, and one Tory candidate got in trouble for asking “What part of ‘Send them back’ do you not understand?”

Etiquette

Here’s an AP story, verbatim:

The US military released 85 Afghans from jails at its Bagram and Kandahar bases yesterday after deciding they posed no threat. The 85 all swore loyalty to the Afghan government and were given gifts and cash. They had been held for between three months and 2 years.

I’m trying to visualize this scene, and I can’t quite do it. What sort of gift is appropriate under these circumstances? Does Hallmark make a “sorry for holding you captive for no good reason” card? And when receiving such a gift, is a thank-you card de rigeur? And were they made to recite an actual oath of loyalty, and how was it worded?

The best interest of the child

Carl Hiaasen excoriates the Florida Department of Children & Families for its insistence that that 13-year old girl not be allowed to have an abortion: “A spokeswoman for DCF Secretary Luci Hadi said the agency is doing ‘what we believe is in the best interest of the child.’ Sure. If you happen to believe that unplanned pregnancy is a real character-builder for teenage girls. Don’t be surprised if DCF uses the same cold-blooded tactics against L.G. as it did against the retarded woman in Orlando -- dragging the case out in court until it’s too late for a safe abortion.”

Condi Rice and the Monroe Doctrine: “We have a positive agenda for this hemisphere.”

Condi Rice has been on a secret tour of Latin America. Well, not really secret, but for all the media attention it’s been getting, it might as well be. A pop quiz: did she visit Ecuador? Do you know the answer? Me neither. Answer, and transcripts of her various interviews and press conferences, here.

If there is an agenda to this trip, presumably it involves Venezuela. In Colombia, Rice said, “We don’t have a problem with the Venezuelan people.” As you know, “we don’t have a problem with the ___ people” is code for “the bombing begins in five minutes.” She carpet-bombed a press conference with utterances of the word hemisphere. “This is a question of what kind of hemisphere do we want to see, what kind of hemisphere do we want to live in, and what states are going to contribute to that hemisphere and what states will not contribute to that kind of hemisphere.” First, Colombia is actually in the Southern, Northern and Western hemispheres. Second, if Venezuela doesn’t properly contribute to the hemisphere, does it get towed to another hemisphere? Third, how many times can we repeat the word hemisphere before it loses all meaning? Fourth, since when does the rather broad geographic expression that is a hemisphere impose a demand for unified institutions? “We have a positive agenda for this hemisphere,” she says. This is imperialism dressed up in the blandest, least ideological language she could find, that of geographic imperative: “You can’t nationalize your oil industry, don’t you know you’re in the Western hemisphere?”

Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh

Go to any British Sunday newspaper site, especially the Independent or the Observer, for new details fleshing out what we already knew: Bush determined on invading Iraq many months before he said so in public (I don’t think anyone now remembers how often and over how long a period of time Bush claimed that he had taken no such decision and that Saddam could avoid it if he just complied with international blah blah blah), that Tony Blair signed up immediately, and that the British attorney general believed the war would be illegal, until he was sent to Washington to be pummeled into agreeing with the American view, presented to him by, among others, Alberto Gonzales.

So let’s move on to pictures of the commemorations in Vietnam of the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. There may or may not be something comforting in the thought that the war, and all its horror and devastation, has been transmuted, like every other war 30 years after its finish, into scruffy old veterans, bored students enduring yet another assembly, hot chicks dressed up as Viet Cong, Uncle Ho waving at tourists, and a fat American veteran happily taking pictures.

Frustrated

Insurgents greet the formation of an Iraqi semi-government (is this one provisional or interim, I’ve forgotten) with the traditional 21-car-bomb salute. Imagine for a moment what it must have been like for those insurgents waiting for that government: they’ve worked themselves up into a proper jihadist state of mind, made out their wills, they’re all ready to blow themselves up for the greater glory of Allah and ascend to heaven etc etc... and then have to wait for more than three months of squabbling and back-room intrigue by pettifogging politicians. Must be frustrating. Must be darned frustrating.

Speaking of frustrated people, I’ve been reading the London Review of Books personals for as many issues as I’ve been able to find online. Over the last few years it’s become an odd little writing phenomenon. Some examples:

Ordinary woman seeks ordinary man for the usual. Box no. 01/01

LRB? Never read it... hoping for a better class of tottie. F, 35. Eric Morecambe, dogs, spring, crispy duck, good dialogue (written and oral), tea, slapstick, Thatcher’s death, vodka, cheek muscles.

Toilet duties. That’s where you come in – buxom, 22-year-old blonde stereotype not shy of adjusting the surgical stockings of 73-year-old misanthrope with poor bladder control. Failing that, just send care home brochures to Box no. 08/05

Woman, 43, would like to meet a man – any man – whose evolutionary path isn’t that of Homer Simpson. Suspecting that’s too difficult, I may go lesbian. Box no. 08/10

I’ve committed every decorating sin listed in the March edition of Elle Decoration and I’m proud. M., 41, with carpeted bathroom, artex ceilings and a wealth of porcelain shepherdesses seeks laminate-crazy woman to 45 for nights of painting the hallway magnolia. And after that, insane sex in front of my MDF mock-Victorian TV cabinet (I’ll polish the brass handles just for you). Box no. 07/05

Ploughing the loneliest furrow. 19 LRB personals and counting. Only one reply. It was my mother telling me not to forget the bread on my way home from B&Q. Man., 51. Box no. 07/06

This is as gay as I get. Man, 37. Box no. 07/07

There’s enough lithium in my medicine cabinet to power three electric cars across a sizeable desert. I’m more than aware that this isn’t actually a selling point, but nonetheless it’s my favourite statistic about me. Man, 33 – officially Three Cars Crazy. Box no. 07/10

Every woman I’ve ever met is painted with unnerving accuracy by the ads placed in this column. You’re all my mother, aren’t you? M., 37, Worcs. Box no. 07/11

... Can’t say I’m choosy. You’re a biker, or worse.

‘Guilty, your Honour.’ Don’t let these be my last words ever spoken to a UK resident female. Long distance offers of love (one letter per month, weight-restricted, and all contents vetted) to Box no. 21/13

Angry trollop, 37. Offers? Box no. 21/14

Man, 46. Appears quite normal, but probably best avoided. What do the doctors know? Box no. 21/15

Easily, but rarely, led forties M post-graduate gooseberry, London/SE, seeks beautiful twenty-year old snake for fun evenings/engagement/crushing disappointment.

My hobbies include crying and hating men. F., 29. Box no. 14/10

Like I’ve said so many times before here, ‘desperate’. Do I have to spell it out? D-E-S-P-E-R-A-T-E. Jeez, what does it take to catch a 20-year old athletic male in this magazine? F., 67. Box no. 14/08

It only takes a minute girl. Not to fall in love, but to realise how futile it is to expect a normal relationship from these ads. With that in mind I’m after a juggling, trombone blowing F. in the finest gold lame this side of Elvis (you’re not a day older than 97). Box no. 22/05

Baste me in butter and call me Slappy. No, really. M. 35. Box no. 20/09

I’m a Pisces – which makes you and I a bad match, but how about your good-looking friend? Non-committal, easily-distracted, fly-by-night F (35). Sorry, I think I just heard my phone ring. Box no. 0222

Meet the new me. Like the old me only less nice after three ads without any sexual intercourse. 42-year old fruitcake (F.). Box no. 17/06

I’ve thought long and hard about all the things I look for in a woman and I’ve condensed their essence into a single word: clankerstanchion. If you are a London-based F with clankerstanchion to spare, please contact man with lashings of wumpflapsy. You will not be disappointed. Often scared, yes. Disappointed, never. Box no. 23/09

[More of my LRB favorites here.]

Here I am, brain the size of a planet...

C-SPAN will indeed be broadcasting the program I mentioned yesterday, in which the 3 British party leaders are questioned by a studio audience, Sunday 6 & 9 PM, PST. Its 1 1/2 hours.

Putin, not satisfied with having taken back into state control most tv & radio, now plans to register mobile phones and control the internet, giving the KGB access to records of which sites people view.

Speaking of unstoppable behemoths capturing medium after medium, I saw the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie today. Although the credits insisted it was adopted from Douglas Adams’s book, for me the definitive H2G2 will always be the original radio series, which I first heard in 1980 (the next sequel of which will begin to be available on bbc.co.uk within a couple of days after it airs on the radio May 3rd. Remember, each episode is online for a week and then disappears forever.)

My review of the movie: mostly harmless. It has more plot and less digression than I’d have liked, but less damage was done in accommodating it to the Procrustean bed of the film format than I expected. A lot of the best material was in the narrative by the Book, and a lot of that is lost. Marvin never complains about having a terrible pain in all the diodes down his left side. Some of the comedic timing is off. And here’s my last caveat: while the sets, the visual effects and puppets are very good (even Marvin the Paranoid Android, who looked so different from how I visualized him, but somehow it worked) the sound effects aren’t much of anything. I wouldn’t even have noticed, except that those in the BBC radio series, more than 25 years ago, were so good. As for casting, Martin Freeman as Arthur and Stephen Fry as the Book were inspired choices and so, surprisingly was Mos Def, who is evidently a musician of the sort the kids like (shows how with-it I am, when I saw the name I thought Albanian, not American rapper). On a second or third viewing, it might be wise to focus on his performance. Of all the actors, he seems to have thought the most about his acting choices (Bill Nighy just did Bill Nighy), about how to portray an alien posing not very well as human, as shown by his choice of a name, “Ford Prefect,” which he thought would be “nicely inconspicuous.” Sam Rockwell, perhaps inevitably, portrays Zaphod Beeblebrox, the fugitive Galactic President, as a parody of George W. Bush, and why not? Anyway, I liked the movie more than I expected to, and you all have my permission to see it, but if you’ve just read the books and never heard the original series (and the less said about the 1980s tv series the better), do yourself a favor and buy the CDs. Update: OK, I’ll admit I had a nefarious plan to get you all to buy those admittedly pricey CDs (12 episodes, 6 hours) through my Amazon link — if 20 of you did, the commission would give me enough money to replace my old, scratchy cassette tapes — but Amazon doesn’t seem to have them in stock. Way to fail to cash in on the movie, BBC!

George Bush and his magic wand

Variety reports that Bush’s decision to hold a pointless press conference in prime time cost the networks $40 million.

The least believable-sounding thing Bush said last night was also the truest: that on gas prices, he “can’t wave a magic wand.” I mean I know he can’t and you know he can’t, but we also know that he neither knows nor believes that. His magic wand has always been privilege. He has never done anything himself, so it’s all magic to him: he speaks commands and they are transformed into reality, he knows not how. His magic wand is his Dick... Cheney, that is. And all his other minions, practicing their pedestrian crafts. During the press conference, he disdainfully swept away the notion that he should have any idea of how things work; “I’m not an economist,” he said at one point, later asserting “I’m not a lawyer.”

So when he says he can’t bring gas prices down, it sounds like he’s lying, and he is, because he is not telling the truth as he (mis)understands it. He said, as he often does, “I’m an optimistic fellow.” Even if Americans understand that that optimism is grounded in self-delusion, they also realize that when he says he can’t wave a magic wand and reduce oil prices, what he means is that he is unwilling to exercise the magical powers he thinks he possesses on behalf of his less magically gifted subjects.

Making the unemployed run on time

Blogger generates the URL for my posts out of the first words of my post title, or the first line if there is no title. For my last post, entitled “Bush press conference: how can I live-blog if they start it early?,” the URL turned out to be http://whateveritisimagainstit.blogspot.com/2005/04/bush-press-conference-how-can-i-live.html

I missed a detail of the bill passed yesterday against helping a minor cross state lines to get an abortion, and it’s a detail that refutes the R line that this is about “dodging” parental-notification laws or helping sexual predators: even if the minor female is accompanied by her parents, this bill adds a 24-hour waiting period. It’s about creating more hoops for pregnant women to jump through (and yes, that is a problematic metaphor).

Britain just opened a Robin Hood Airport in South Yorkshire. Motto: “Your Luggage Isn’t Lost, We Gave It to the Poor.”

Israel refuses an American proposal to give the Palestinian police actual weapons. Israel’s response: “Let them first take the weapons from the terrorists.” Yeah, that’s a plan.

The Christian Democratic justice minister of the German state of Hesse (who is neither Christian, democratic nor just) suggested that the unemployed be fitted with electronic tagging ankle bracelets to give them “the chance to return to a regulated daily schedule”.


You go to war with the superheroes you have... Captain America strategically deploys his shield because he caught Rummy looking at Spiderman’s package earlier.

Bush press conference: how can I live-blog if they start it early?

My apologies to anyone who listened to me and tuned in to Bush’s press conference late. 5:30 was the announced time, really it was. And no thanks to McNeil-Lehrer, which two hours beforehand said that there would be a press conference without giving the time. (Update: they moved it up because the networks would otherwise have gone with their regular crap, on the first day of sweeps. I suspect the White House knew about sweeps, figuring the networks would have to carry Bush but have no time for analysis afterwards.)

Bush doesn’t often address the nation in prime time, and hasn’t held a prime-time press conference in over a year. Since they aren’t routine, you’d expect him to come to one with an agenda. But he didn’t. And with major partisan firefights in Congress, I was wondering if he would come in order to 1) attack the D’s, or 2) offer compromises. He did neither (although he did say he wouldn’t resort to name-calling, in response to a question about partisanship, possibly from “Stretch”). Evidently (and thankfully) he has no plan for getting his agenda passed, and tonight he used one of the great weapons of the presidency, the ability to commandeer the airwaves, for no particular purpose, except that it was the 100th day of his second term. He didn’t help any of his positions (Social Security, Bolton, judges), he didn’t hurt them.

Why does Shrub “Southern up” his pronunciation of Yoownited Nations in a way he doesn’t for United States?

He said his administration is “doing everything we can to make gasoline more affordable”, and said that there was nothing it could do. Guess they can all go home early then.

He said America will stand by its commitment to Iraq, but that its commitment to pay Social Security was “file cabinets full of IOUs.” Commitments he does believe are real: on rendition, “we send people to countries where they say they’re not going to torture the people”; on Vladimir Putin, “he stood up and said he strongly supports democracy. I take him for his word.”

By Bush standards, it was a superficially good performance, meaning he didn’t step on his own tongue much. He accomplished this by saying nothing he hasn’t said ten or more times before, and saying it at length, which ensured that few actual questions were asked over the course of an hour, and none of those questions were unexpected.

Nightline tonight will compare this press conference with a BBC program in which the British party leaders were fiercely questioned by members of the public (I saw excerpts on the World News; hopefully C-SPAN will show it Sunday night). Might be fun.

And you think the DMV has long lines

Bush press conference tonight, 5:30 pm PST.

The Road to Surfdom notes that religious groups will oppose a new vaccine against cervical cancer, a sexually transmitted virus, being given to under-age girls because, says a rep of Tony Perkin’s Family Research Council, “they may see it as a licence to engage in premarital sex.” Are a lot of teenage girls waiting to be issued with a sex license before having premarital sex?

Follow-up: as promised, Ramune Gele gave birth in an art gallery in Berlin. Audra, in case you were wondering. Also, and I say this for the benefit of certain users of Google, and you know who you are: there are no pictures. Live with it.

In the new Iraqi cabinet, Achmad Chalabi will be acting oil minister. I hope somebody checks before he leaves work every day that he isn’t smuggling oil out in his pants.

The National Security Archive has pictures of dead soldiers’ coffins that the Pentagon stalled releasing (the pictures, not the coffins) for over a year. Note that the DOD dirtbags blacked out the faces and insignia of the honor guard.

Nothing can go wrong can go wrong can go wrong can go

Part of the R’s argument for killing the filibuster is that the Constitution requires that the Senate vote on every judicial nominee. It doesn’t, I’ve read it, there’s no way to squeeze that interpretation out of it. But in the spirit of compromise, I say fine, let’s have a vote on all the judicial nominees who haven’t had one. Chronologically. We don’t get to Priscilla Owen until the last remaining Clinton nominee has been voted on. In fact, I think it’s long past time Abe Fortas got a vote, I don’t care if he is dead, he’s not a lot more dead than Rehnquist, and he doesn’t have those stupid stripes on his sleeve.

The Daily Show had a clip from CNN of GeeDubya talking about how we gotta build more nukyular power plants, and how today’s technology makes them so much safer... and then CNN lost its feed from the speech. Also, he gave this speech just over three hours after spending part of his morning in the White House bunker because a cloud passed before the sun.

The more significant coincidence is the claim today that Chernobyl’s containment sarcophagus is falling apart. There was supposed to be a new one built, but a lot of that money, Ukraine being Ukraine, has vanished.

Most of us don’t have so much blind faith in technology — especially those of us who rely on Blogger — but Bush is in awe of what he can’t understand, which is almost everything.


George Bush and friends place their faith in technology.

Bush’s answer, by the way, is to reduce regulation on nuke plants and give them federal insurance against delays. “A secure energy future for America must include more nuclear power.” Yes, secure... nuclear... secure...

“I have never told a lie,” Tony Blair lies

Michael Howard has been on the attack against Blair’s character, which rather awkwardly requires him to say simultaneously that Blair lied about the case for war in Iraq but that he, Howard, supports the war anyway. Here’s the new Tory poster:



Subtle, huh?

Blair responds, “I have never told a lie. No. I don’t intend to go telling lies to people. I did not lie over Iraq.” So that settles that.

I have too many remote controls, with too many buttons. But I don’t think any of them do this:

The BBC this summer will try to persuade viewers to donate a kidney by pressing the red interactive button on their remote controls.

Iraq’s National Security Adviser shows the savvy that won him that position by announcing of the assassination of MP Lameah Abed Khadouri al-Sakri, “We believe it is politically motivated.”

The House voted to make it illegal for anyone to transport a minor across state lines to have an abortion. You’ve probably heard about R’s rewriting the official description of D amendments to exempt grandparents, siblings (or innocent participants like bus drivers) etc from the law to make it look like D’s were trying to protect “sexual predators.” But some of the purpose of this bill is lost in the focus on abortion rights rather than abortion availability. The AP story, for example, describes this bill as intended to “make it illegal to dodge [!] parental-consent laws”. Actually, with fewer and fewer counties in which abortion services are available, and more women farther from abortion providers than before, for many of them this bill would cut off the use of the nearest provider.

Speaking of the culture of life, Florida’s Department of Children & Families decided to make a child have a family, getting a court order to block a 13-year old in a shelter from getting an abortion.