An embryo is a person

Discussing the stem-cell bill, a lot of R’s have declared a principle in which they do not actually believe: that taxpayers shouldn’t have to fund practices they find morally repugnant. First, opinion polls show that more Americans support stem-cell research than, fer instance, the ongoing war in Iraq. Second, government does lots of things that various people find morally repugnant; if you’re not morally repelled by something government does, you have no morals to begin with. The reason the R’s are enunciating this principle, which they wouldn’t apply to the death penalty, nuclear weapons, Guantanamo, etc etc and Jesus Christ already etc, is so that they can explain how stem-cell research is awful and icky and Tampering in God’s Domain (Tom DeLay said today, “An embryo is a person.”), but they’re not actually outlawing it.

Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) has turned against the Iraq war. Here’s why you give a shit: he’s the guy behind the “Freedom fries” campaign.

Andre Gunder Frank has died, if that means anything to y’all.

In London an apartment in Notting Hill is being rented for only £135 a week. It is a converted storage closet measuring 5.7 square meters (2.2 X 1 meter), with the bed raised on a platform, a shower and kitchenette, emphasis on the -ette, I’m guessing.

Oh wait, I’ve found pictures (which the Guardian didn’t have, because who would want to see the tiny apartment the article is about). The guy who looks like he knows he’s getting away with something is the estate agent. The woman is the tenant. She’s 5’ 2”.

If a sperm is wasted, George gets quite irate

In order to emphasize his opposition to embryonic stem-cell research, Bush held an odd little photo op today, meeting with people who had donated left-over embryos to a Christian embryo adoption group with a somewhat creepy logo,



and families whose children were created from such embryos (Bush calls them “reminders that every human life is a precious gift of matchless value”). “Rather than discard these embryos created during in vitro fertilization, or turn them over for research that destroys them, these families have chosen a life-affirming alternative.” Yes, to Bush medical research is the exact opposite of “life-affirming.” Incidentally, destroying human life in order to save human life, which he rejects for stem-cell research, is precisely his rationale for supporting the death penalty, to say nothing of “preventive” warfare.

Catapulting the propaganda

Syria announces that it is suspending all military and intelligence links with the United States. Um, ok. I think means they’ll no longer torture people for us.

Yesterday Karzai repeated the Rummy line that “individual acts [of torture/beating/murder of prisoners] do not reflect either on governments or on societies.” So how many “bad apples” does it take before it does reflect on them? Really: five, ten, twenty, a thousand?


(Chan Lowe, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 3/17/05)

Another question I’d like to hear asked, of the supporters of parental notification for abortions (the Supreme Court is going to hear a case on it; California will vote on it in Schwarzenegger’s special election), is whether their concern for parental involvement would entail supporting parents of, say, a knocked-up 14-year old, who wished her to abort.

Bush at one of his we-have-to-destroy-Social-Security-in-order-to-save-it rallies:

If you’ve retired, you don’t have anything to worry about -- third time I’ve said that. (Laughter.) I’ll probably say it three more times. See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.

Catapult the propaganda? Sort of Goebbels meets “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”

Speaking of holy hand grenades, the Georgian authorities are offering a reward for information about the attempt to kill Bush with one: 20,000 laris, which is $10,949.90.

A man who lived in a tent for two weeks waiting for Star Wars tickets was arrested because, as a registered sex offender, he was supposed to tell the police when he changed addresses.

An uneasy nuclear armistice

Hurrah, a compromise on judicial nominees. Give three cheers and one cheer more. The R’s have agreed to allow the D’s to keep the right to filibuster, unless they actually try to use it. A couple of Bush’s nominees will bite the dust, but not the worst of them, such as William Pryor, Janice Rogers Brown and Priscilla Owen. Presumably if these bozos are considered acceptable people to hold lifetime judgeships, then the “extraordinary circumstances” under which D’s can filibuster would involve candidates who are actually worse than those three. The deal therefore suggests that it is illegitimate for D’s to oppose judges with extreme anti-abortion views, like Pryor and Owen. (Links to previous posts and outside articles on Pryor & Owen are at the top of this old post of mine.)

Although R’s have been complaining about a minority of senators trying to dictate to the majority, this deal was arranged by 14 senators. Including Joseph Lieberman, which is the Suckiness Seal of Approval.

Still, a quick look at the National Review Online suggests that the right-wing aren’t any happier than I am, which is some comfort.

The British Tory party, trying to pick a new leader who isn’t such a loser, has decided the people really holding the Tory party back are Tory party members, who will no longer be allowed any say in the choosing of the party leader.

Bumper sticker seen today: “What Would Scooby Do?”

It’s not just Bush: Scotty McClellan in today’s Gaggle said several times that American troops are in Afghanistan at its “invitation.” The Gaggle is also fun for Scotty’s unwillingness to admit that “consultation” does not mean that the government of Afghanistan, which he keeps calling a sovereign nation, has any say over American military operations there. Must be a definition of sovereign with which I am not familiar.

Bush & Karzai: Afghanistan society is peaceful and optimistic

Bush today met Hamid Karzai, who is usually kept stored in a closet just off the Mural Room.



Speaking of coming out of the closet, Hamid tells George that he has just the softest hands.



George, on the other hand, is mesmerized by Hamid’s hat.



Bush: “Increasing numbers of low-level Taliban are getting the message that Afghanistan society is peaceful and optimistic.” Although just a minute later he says that in this peaceful and optimistic society there is a need to “continue to train the Afghan army so that they’re capable of defeating the terrorists.” Maybe the terrorists are peaceful and optimistic too.

Asked whether US troops would take orders from Karzai’s regime, as Karzai suggested a couple of days ago, Bush said fuck no. OK, he said “our relationship is one of cooperate and consult,” but it amounts to the same thing. When Bush says “cooperate and consult,” it means the same thing as “advise and consent”: shut up and do what I tell you. Actually, pretty much everything Bush ever says means shut up and do what I tell you.

Bush continues:

It’s a free society. There is a democratically-elected government. They’ve invited us in, and we’ll consult with them in terms of how to achieve mutual goals, and that is to rout out the remnants of al Qaeda, to deal with those folks who would come and like to create harm to U.S. citizens and/or Afghan citizens.

Invited us in?

Karzai generously forgives America for torturing and beating his country’s citizens to death: “So the prisoner abuse thing is not at all a thing that we attribute to anybody else but those individuals.” The prisoner abuse thing? “The Afghan people are grateful, very, very much to the American people.” Well, the ones in Guantanamo are just grateful very much, not very very much. “They recognize that individual acts do not reflect either on governments or on societies. These things happen everywhere.” Sure, Norway, Canada, Antarctica, everywhere. “And I’m glad to tell you that I was reading today somewhere that one of those persons has been given a sentence of prison for three months and removed from his job, and that’s a good thing.” And a jolly stiff fine, too. A soldier beats a prisoner from his country to death for, supposedly, spitting at him, and Karzai has to pretend that’s sufficient. It’s the puppet thing taken to the next level: instead of speaking while Bush drinks a glass of water, he has to speak while eating whatever shit is handed to him.

Then it’s state fair time. Bush: “President Karzai was talking about how the quality of the pomegranate that used to be grown in Afghanistan, evidently it’s quite famous for -- the country is quite famous for growing pomegranates.” I know that’s what I always think of. Bush thinks they should grow those (I don’t think he actually knows what a pomegranate is) instead of poppies. Oh and honeydews, those are nice too. “After all, Afghanistan has had a long history of farming.”

A reporter asks Chimpy about whether we’re losing in Iraq; he says, “I think they’re being defeated. And that’s why they continue to fight.” Clears that right up.

The shadow of repression

Daily Variety headline: “The Sith Hits the Fans.”

There was a meeting of dissidents in Cuba, which was treated to a smuggled-in tape-recording of George W. Bush, congratulating them on coming out from under the “shadow of repression,” a metaphor perhaps more appropriate to cooler climates.

I can’t find a transcript on the White House website or anywhere else. I know he said something about keeping the pressure on Cuba, which may play less well in Havana than it does in Miami. I think if he’s going to encourage the overthrow of a government, commit the US to support a country’s opposition, that sort of thing, he should let the rest of us in on it.

Repetitive administration of legitimate force

The NYT follows up its Bagram story with one on the army’s failure to investigate in more than a quarter-assed fashion. It figured the dead prisoners had been beaten so many times by so many guards that it was impossible to determine which blow was the fatal one. Doesn’t the military have the concept of “felony homicide”? Sez Bagram’s then senior staff lawyer, “It was reasonable to conclude at the time that repetitive administration of legitimate force resulted in all the injuries we saw.” And thus a new euphemism for beatin’ a guy to death is born.

Now, they’re after Tom DeLay and the free-market values he defends

The WaPo quotes a pro-Tom DeLay ad: “The media, the liberals, they’re in a frenzy. Last year, they went after President Bush... Now, they’re after Tom DeLay and the free-market values he defends.” It took me a couple of seconds to realize that “they went after President Bush” referred to the election campaign, when that arch-seditionist John Kerry dared to be mildly critical of the Emperor Chimpy, He Who Is Without Error. Also, I don’t know about “the media, the liberals,” but the problem I have with Tom DeLay is less his free market values than his free golfing vacations and all the other freebies he’s snagged from lobbyists.

From the Sunday Times:

Artist of the week

Staff at the British Museum failed to notice that an early cave painting, exhibited in one of the galleries, showed a man pushing a supermarket trolley. The 10in by 6in piece of rock, and slipped into the museum by a practical joker known as Banksy, was accompanied by a sign which explained: “Early man venturing towards the out-of-town hunting grounds. This finely preserved example of primitive art dates from the post-catatonic era”.

The same practical joker recently hung one of his own paintings in Tate Modern. Officials only noticed when it fell off the wall.

There’s some interesting maneuvering going on. The NYT story about the murder of prisoners at Bagram Air Base appeared just before a scheduled visit by Karzai to America, and there was the Koran-in-the-toilet thing. So Karzai has been forced to act all non-puppety and talk tough, demanding the transfer of Afghan prisoners from our torturers to his torturers and the end of raids by American troops unless they have a search warrant (!) and so on. In response, the Americans are leaking that Karzai isn’t doing enough about opium eradication. What the BBC story I hyperlinked doesn’t say is that Karzai still controls only a few blocks in downtown Kabul, so when he’s accused of not cooperating in poppy-producing areas in which has no actual, ya know, power, what is meant is that he’s resisting American demands to drop huge amounts of defoliants from the air willy nilly.

I was going to write “indiscriminately,” but I thought I’d see if I could get away with “willy nilly.” Sadly, I don’t think I can quite carry it off.

I don’t think they really have the sense of Americans being religious

Laura Bush, to reporters: “I hope that the Middle East, the broader Middle East, get to know Americans like we really are. I don’t think they really have the sense of Americans being religious.” Yeah, that’s why they hate us, they think we’re not Christian enough.

A correspondent suggests that the Sun’s pun yesterday, which stumped me, was one that was simply too infantile for me to grasp, a play on “ants in his pants.”

I said or implied that the Uzbek demonstrators were only the recipients of murderous violence. In fact, they also (or at least the organized portion of them who planned the prison break-in which began the week’s events) were not averse to killing people themselves, on a smaller scale of course. Both the Sindy and the Sunday Times talk of the military finishing off the wounded. The Sunday Times finds 3 distinct massacres. I still don’t know what happened to the 23 businessmen broken out of prison.

Guantanamo is building a psychiatric ward. Insert obvious and not very funny joke here.

Well done, Sister Suffragette!

Somewhere I saw an article on reaction by fans to the Stars Wars movie in which one was quoted saying “I have closure now.”

Bush will be meeting Hamid Karzai Monday. When he talks about Afghanistan having an “elected government,” as he did in his weekly radio thing, remember that parliamentary elections are a couple of years late. I once had a life insurance policy, I think it came free for a year from my credit card, that included a benefit of $500 if I lost an eye and $1,000 if I lost both, which is evidently exactly twice as bad as losing one in insurance-company math. It isn’t, and neither is the election of just one branch of a government a democracy; half a democracy is no democracy.

Speaking of half a democracy, Laura Bush (R-Stepford) is in the Middle East talking about the rights of women, including voting. But not — and you can bet the omission is intentional, and that women in the Middle East will recognize it even if Western media do not — running for office, which is evidently too radical a concept for Laura to be pushing. Not that someone whose influence and visibility derive entirely from being married to a president is the poster child for women’s empowerment. Also because the former teacher and librarian is dead ignorant: Laura, stop saying that American women didn’t vote until 1920, it’s not true.

Pulpified

If you haven’t yet, read the whole NYT story about the torture and murder of prisoners in Afghanistan; it’s the details that count.

• The mentally disturbed prisoner they called “Timmy,” after the South Park character, and taught to “screech” like him, in between beatings.
• The fact that several members of the Third Platoon were “devout bodybuilders,” by which the reporter means, but does not say, they were taking steroids.
• Specialist Damien “Monster” Corsetti, who held his penis against a prisoner’s face during interrogation and threatened to rape him, by which the reporter means, but does not say, that Corsetti’s penis was erect because he gets off on this sort of thing.
• The prisoner whose autopsy showed legs so badly beaten (“pulpified”) that they looked like he’d been run over by a bus.

And on Abu Ghraib, Seymour Hersh notes a few of the questions unanswered since he first wrote about events there, including What did Bush do when he was told about them?

News International (yes, that’s Rupert Murdoch) is demanding £20,000 per photo of Saddam in his undies. Something to keep in mind if you see them on the front page of your morning paper tomorrow. Although since they were taken by members of the military and illegally leaked/sold to News International, I don’t see that NI has any property rights in the photos that anyone else needs to respect.

Ellen Goodman writes about the “rainbow coalition of monochromatic minds,” the Republicans’ strategy of using a woman (Priscilla Owen) (read Joe Conason on Owen’s ethics), and a black woman (Janice Rogers Brown), as the poster children for the poor filibustered judicial nominees (Brown’s the daughter of an Alabama sharecropper, you know). I’ve been meaning to write about the repugnant sexist assumption that the D’s will look like big meanies if they pick on a girl. Mark my words, the next nominee Frist brings up will sport spectacles, because “You wouldn’t filibuster a guy with glasses, would you?”

“Authority” is an interestingly ambiguous word. An NYT story today was headlined “Uzbek Government Restores Authority in Area of Revolt.” I was going to accuse the paper of regimeist bias, a term I just made up meaning an assumption that any government, simply by reason of being a government, is more or less legitimate. Looking up the word, I find that the bias is in the language itself, since authority is defined as “the power or right to give orders and enforce obedience.” Power and right are two very different things, and while Karimov may have the power to rule in Karasu, and Uzbekistan more generally, right and legitimacy he does not have. (You know, the indirect object/object/verb structure I just used would have looked perfectly fine any other week; this week it’s suspect because everybody keeps writing like Yoda. Everybody: stop writing like Yoda.)

Simon Hoggart of the Guardian quotes Donald Wise of the Daily Mirror as saying something that also applies to bloggers: “being a foreign correspondent was like peeing off the Grand Canyon - you assumed something had reached the bottom but couldn’t be sure.”

The Times has a cute movie story, about a scream, recorded in 1951 and used in dozens of movies since then, including every Star Wars movie and two Lord of the Rings’s (with a link to the scream).

Boxers or Briefs of Mass Destruction?

The latest Page 3 girl:



My question is, if that’s his cell door behind him, where’s the person with the camera standing?

Also, I don’t get the Sun’s pun (I assume that’s a pun, it’s always a pun).

Other pictures, not online, show him washing his own pants. No picture of him dyeing his hair.

(Update: today Bush responded to a reporter’s question about American abuse of prisoners, “I think the world ought to be -- pay attention to the contrast between a society which was run by a brutal tyrant in which there was no transparency and a society in which the whole world watches a government find the facts, lay the facts out for the citizens to see, and that punishment, when appropriate, be delivered.” Setting the bar pretty low for himself: at least we’re better than in the days of Saddam Hussein. Now we’re all transparent-like, and underwear justice is seen to be done.)

Toilets with brains

From the London Times: “Albert Marshall, the last surviving British soldier to have taken part in a cavalry charge with sword drawn, has died aged 108.

From the AP: “A ‘toilet with brains’, a high-tech lavatory to help multiple sclerosis patients and the disabled, is being developed, said researchers at the Technical University of Vienna. Cards or voice are used to activate hand-rail placement and seat adjustment.” Don’t flush any Korans down them, though, or they’ll just keep nagging about that left-hand thing.

Remarkable hubris: Rick Santorum wants to bomb Paris or something

A Russian court acquits soldiers who shot 6 Chechens to death, including a pregnant woman. They admitted doing it, but said they were under orders. The Nuremberg defense lives! They’d shot up a van at a checkpoint, killing one of the passengers. They were then given orders, which obviously had to be obeyed, to cover up the incident and, oh yeah, kill all the survivors.

Rick Santorum cleverly compares the nuclear option to the ever-popular concept of bombing Paris (I know this quote will be everywhere else. Now it’s here too):

Some are suggesting we’re trying to change the law, we’re trying to break the rules. Remarkable. Remarkable hubris. I mean, imagine, the rule has been in place for 214 years that this is the way we confirm judges. Broken by the other side two years ago, and the audacity of some members to stand up and say, how dare you break this rule. It’s the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 “I’m in Paris. How dare you invade me. how dare you bomb my city? It’s mine.” This is no more the rule of the Senate than it was the rule of the Senate before not to filibuster. It was an understanding and agreement, and it has been abused.

An old post of mine contains other jaw-droppingly awful Santorum quotes about the judiciary.

Fafblog summarizes: “Newsweek has killed over a dozen Afghans with a toilet and will do it again unless it is stopped.”

Congratulations and amen, graduates

From the AP: “MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A pregnant student who was banned from graduation at her Roman Catholic high school announced her own name and walked across the stage at the close of the program. ... The father of Cosby’s child, a senior at the school, was allowed to participate in the graduation.”

Meanwhile in Florida, a federal judge allows 4 Brevard Cty public high schools to hold graduation ceremonies in a church, and without covering up a 16-foot cross. The judge said the lawsuit had been filed too late for an alternative venue to be arranged (no story I’ve looked at say when it was filed), under the well-known legal principle that the Constitution is in force only if it’s not inconvenient. There would have been enough time to cover up the cross, but the judge said it would be “improper” to order a church to do so. Maybe if this were a religious service. By not daring interfere with the cross, the judge is admitting that a church is still a church even when hosting a secular function, thus proving that the first part of his decision was wrong.

I do not rise for party, I rise for principle.

Dana Milbank has a lovely, must-read article about the Senate fight over judicial nominations. It starts with Frist astonishingly unprepared to answer why he supported filibusters of a Clinton judicial nominee: “Mr. President, the, in response, the Paez nomination, we’ll come back and discuss it... It’s not the cloture votes, per se. It’s the partisan leadership-led use of cloture to kill, to defeat, to assassinate these nominees.” Later the R’s claimed that he’d meant character assassination (keep in mind that one of the key players is Ted Kennedy, who has a little bit of experience with both kinds of assassination) (and Frist has a little bit of experience with assassinating kitty cats). Later, Harry Reid accidentally called Dick Cheney a “great paramour” of virtue. He corrected himself to “paragon,” which doesn’t seem right either. Maybe he meant paramecium. Or parasite.

Frist claimed “I do not rise for party, I rise for principle.” (I assume that by “rise,” he does not mean “get sexually aroused”). But you’ll notice he didn’t take any chance that the D’s might let the first judge through by picking one with bipartisan support. No, he started with Priscilla Owen, an arch anti-abortionist. When a politician starts talking about principle, it’s time to clench your ass-cheeks very tightly, cuz he’s gonna try an’ fuck ya.

The Post also attributes to Ted Stevens the idea that would become the “nuclear option:” simply ruling that filibusters would no longer be permitted. The same Ted Stevens who secured for Anchorage $1.5 million for a bus stop. A single bus stop. Outside the, I believe, Anchorage Museum of the History of Snow. Oh, it’ll be a very nice bus stop. Enclosed, heated, possibly with a pool, a masseur, who knows.

I know I didn’t connect those two Ted Stevens stories, but the line between them is on the Anchorage bus line, and who wants to leave the luxurious bus stop and get on a crappy ol’ bus?

Credible

In Gaggleland, Scotty McClellan is still playing his balancing act on Uzbekistan: “Obviously, we have continued to urge restraint by all and for all to work for calm in Uzbekistan.” A reporter compared this restraint with Bush’s 2002 attack on Castro for arresting dissidents, but not killing or boiling them. Little Scotty denies that this is a double standard: “Obviously, Terry, there are different circumstances around the world. You have to deal with those different circumstances.” So that clears that up. Obviously. When a reporter started talking about the US rendering prisoners to Uz., Scotty cut him off.

He also ignored a question about whether Posada is a terrorist.

And he suggested that Newsweek reporters and editors travel the earth as penitents, apologizing one by one to every human being on the planet. It’s the very least they could do.

McClellan on the nuclear option: “I think it would have consequences for the Democratic leadership in the United States Senate if they continue to hold up progress on the important priorities for the American people. The American people elected us to get things done.” Democrats were, of course, elected by the Cuban people.

Which is practically what the Republican party does say in an email today claiming that the Democrats stole the Washington gubernatorial election in 2004.

The military is still investigating whether any Korans were flushed down any toilets. It is doing so by checking log entries and other documents; it is conducting no interviews. Because obviously (shit, now McClellan has me doing it) if you did flush a Koran, you’d enter that in the log. The only paper trail that could solve this case — and I suspect you’re all way ahead of me now — would involve soggy, shit-covered pages of the Koran. This is the time-honored Pentagon investigatorial technique: when Colin Powell investigated the My Lai massacre, he too conducted no interviews, and concluded that no massacre took place. Pentagon spokesmodel Larry DiRita says the allegation of Koran-dumping has been made many times before but never investigated because the allegations were not “credible” and the prisoners were probably lying. I’d like to know his definition of “credible.”

Space superiority is not our birthright, but it is our destiny

An Independent article by Johann Hari (behind a pay barrier so no link) finds America’s current policy towards Uzbekistan to have been set out in the report of Dick Cheney’s Secret Energy Task Force: “make energy security a priority of our trade and foreign policy.” So as long as they don’t boil dissidents in oil — our oil — they can get on with it.

From a NYT article on Bush admin plans to militarize space:

The Air Force believes “we must establish and maintain space superiority,” Gen. Lance Lord, who leads the Air Force Space Command, told Congress recently. “Simply put, it’s the American way of fighting.” ... “Space superiority is not our birthright, but it is our destiny.”

Really, I’d be making fun of those quotes now if only I could get over there being a General Lance Lord (shorter version: General Lord) in charge of an Air Force Space Command. Alliterative and phallic at the same time, what were his parents thinking, and in charge of rockets, oh it has to be a bad joke from a 1940s radio serial.

I found a picture of him, too large a file to clutter up this page with, but Lance Lord is actually a middle-aged bald guy with glasses and a more than passing resemblance to Jesse Helms. (Update: I have received an email informing me that that Air Force picture is misattributed, although whoever is pictured looks a lot like the real Lance Lord. Hope the Air Force keeps better track of its rockets than it does of its generals.)

And one of these space weapons programs is called Rods from God. And one involves bouncing lasers off giant mirrors hanging from satellites, or really high-up blimps. This is like every James Bond movie ever made.

OK, now they’re talking about a former Under Secretary of the Air Force Peter Teets. Pete Teets. Another middle-aged bald guy with glasses and a more than passing resemblance to every other middle-aged bald guy with glasses.

OK, I want everyone to stand up (extra points if you climb up on your desk) and intone in your deepest old-timey radio-announcer voice, “Space superiority is not our birthright, but it is our destiny!”

Now do it as William Shatner.

Now Elmer Fudd...

No one saw me make a bomb

According to Uzbekistan’s prosecutor-general, “Only terrorists were liquidated by government forces.” So that’s ok then.

Luis Posada Carriles gave a press conference this morning, as all fugitives from justice do. He said that after sneaking illegally into this country, he’d hidden for a while, but then realized no one was trying to catch him. I haven’t seen a full transcript, but while various reports claim in their headlines that he denied being involved in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban plane, he actually seems only to have said, “No one saw me make a bomb.” As for the wave of bombings in Cuban hotels in 1997, for which he’d previously admitted responsibility, this time he refused to say one way or another, though he did say the bombs used were “very small,” as was the Italian tourist killed, by what Posada calls a “little wound,” and then suggests that the Cubans killed the wounded Italian to make Posada look bad. He said he’d be willing to be tried by an international court for the plane bombing, if Cuba also turned over some people. I love it when the perps think they can negotiate.

And then the feds grabbed him. Just like Elian. Heh heh.

From today’s Gaggle:

Q -- but nowhere in the Constitution does it say that nominees are guaranteed an up or down vote.

MR. McCLELLAN: The Constitution said “advise and consent,” and that’s the role of the United States Senate, not “advise and block.”

Isn’t that persuasive, just like that masterpiece of the forensic arts, “It’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.”

For a moment, I was amazed at the ability of the Uzbek government to out and out deny that soldiers fired on crowds, an event seen and heard by many, many people. Then I turned back to the ongoing spectacle of Rummy Rumsfeld and Lawrence DiRita pulling their heads out of Achmad Chalabi’s ass long enough to blame Newsweek for the fact that foreigners don’t like us and strew our path with flowers. Who knew that not being in full command of the facts could lead to people coming to harm?

I think they broke me. They just overloaded my systems, and now I just don’t have enough contempt, sarcasm and outrage with which to respond to this. I thought it was bad last week when Tom DeLay accused the Democrats of having no class, but now I’m just broken. I may have to watch Teletubbies for the next few hours; if I see Bush’s face or hear his voice I’ll just have nothing left. So cold. So cold.

Hey, get that Dick Cheney who voted against the resolution calling for me to be released from prison in here, I’m gonna kick his butt.

Not exactly kid gloves

The WaPo says that the Pentagon actually has very strict rules on the handling of the Koran in Guantanamo. For example, the handler must wear gloves. Don’t know why that doesn’t reassure me.

Make it possible for people to have a political life

David Benson-Pope, a junior education minister in the New Zealand government (a job he combined with the post of minister of fisheries; small country, I guess), has had to resign after he was accused of having, in his previous job as a teacher, hitting one student in the nose, and punishing another for talking in class by stuffing a tennis ball in his mouth and taping his hands to the desk. No word on whether he ever similarly abused his authority over fish.

Someone should suggest to the Afghans that when they see something they don’t like in a newsmagazine, they should just blog about it. It’s less aerobic, but there’s also less chance of being shot. I kept expecting to see signs with hyperlinks. Anyhoo, the Pentagon has been trying to have its cake and eat it too; it’s claiming that the reports are false, but failed to respond when asked for comment by the Newsweek reporters. There’s a reason the story had only one source. The government and its employees (plus the inaccessible prisoners, of course) were the ones in possession of the facts Newsweek needed. To demand too many sources would make the DOD’s failure to comment an effective veto, rewarding stonewalling. The Pentagon continues to try to manage the debate, issuing blanket condemnations of Newsweek but refusing to send someone to appear in McNeil-Lehrer’s segment on the subject (or, probably, Nightline tonight), precisely because it wants the focus to be on Newsweek’s journalistic practices rather than Guantanamo’s interrogation practices. [Update. Well, not really an update since I hadn’t posted yet, but before writing that I hadn’t seen Josh Marshall’s similar thoughts:

“If the new standard is that every material fact reported must be attested to on the record then in the future we’ll know only a tiny fraction of what we do now about the internal workings of our government. What I see here is an effort by the White House to set an entirely different standard when it comes to reportage that in any way reflects critically on the White House.”]

The State Dept is still doing its balancing act on Uzbekistan, criticizing both sides equally, although the death toll seems to be 600-0. Here’s Richard Boucher:

On the side of the demonstrators, rioters, whatever you call them, the armed attack by civilians on the prison in Andijan and other government facilities is the kind of violence that we cannot countenance in any way and we condemn these kind of armed attacks on prison facilities and on government facilities. There is nothing that justifies acts of violence or terrorism and we’re very concerned at reports of either the release or the escape of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan members.

Who says the released prisoners were terrorists? Oh yes, the guys who torture and boil people (including some we send there)(“Dammit I brought this man here to be dry-cleaned and he’s clearly been boiled!”) and who claim all critics of their government are terrorists. Also, in a country where political prisoners (of whom there are an estimated 7,000) are treated the way they are in Uzbekistan, attacks on prisons to release them are in fact justified. Remember the Bastille!



Condi Rice stepped up criticism of Uzbekistan; it could now be described as “mild”: “We have been encouraging the Karimov government to make reforms, to make the system more open, to make it possible for people to have a political life”. A very top-down view, in which voting, organizing, free speech etc are privileges granted at the will and whim of the ruler.

No credible allegations of willful Koran desecration

Women in Kuwait will finally be allowed to vote, calloo callay, and even stand for office, although the law also requires them to abide by Islamic law, whatever that means (some Islamicists say it means not voting or standing for office).

Eli at Left I notes the differences between what Newsweek actually said in its clarification of its story about Koran-flushing in Gitmo, and how what it said is being mischaracterized (see also The Light of Reason). Scotty McClellan started bitching about Newsweek not meeting a “certain journalistic standard” by failing to retract the story completely; “I just find it puzzling,” he said. Little Scotty has not only never met any standards of truth-telling himself, but runs across the street or ducks into a doorway whenever he sees them coming down the block towards him. And as for the number of things Scotty finds puzzling...

Speaking of standards, when a Pentagon spokesmodel says that the story is “demonstrably false” and that there are “no credible allegations of willful Koran desecration,” one really has to wonder about his standards. If there are no credible allegations, have there been incredible allegations? And who evaluated their credibility? And have there been instances of non-willful Koran desecration? Answers on a separate piece of paper, and show all your work.

My assumption is that Newsweek, horrified that all these people have died because of what it reported, deliberately wrote a correction that could be mischaracterized in the way it has been.

Henry Kissinger, that arch-proponent of realpolitik, has an op-ed piece in the WaPo calling for a middle way with Bush’s unrealpolitik (shorter Kissigner: don’t get too hung up on that promoting-democracy thing). Actually, Kissinger hasn’t changed much. “Elections are not an inevitable guarantee of a democratic outcome,” he writes today. When he decided to overthrow Chile’s democratically elected government, he said, “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.”

More London Review of Books personal ads:

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Mature gentleman (62), aged well, noble grey looks, fit and active, sound mind and unfazed by the fickle demands of modern society seeks… damn it, I have to pee again. Box no. 10/06

This ad is the final phase in my plan to conquer the earth. Man, 41, seeks puppet-like trillionaire F with vast army and intergalactic fleet, ready to hand over total control of all affairs. Must also enjoy canasta and be a non-smoking vegetarian. Box no. 10/07

[More of my LRB favorites here.]

We’ll make it rubble

A perhaps poorly phrased opening sentence in a story on the Pentagon website: “Terrorists continued to attack innocent Iraqis as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice paid a surprise visit to the country today.”

Rice evidently went in order to put pressure on Iraqis to shit out a constitution by August. Also, see if you can find the key word Ms. Subliminable is trying to get across here: “We talked about how the political process should be inclusive -- and the government is an inclusive government -- and the need for the constitutional writing process to be inclusive.”

A WaPo article about Operation Matador focuses on the American Marines’ frustrations about not finding enough Iraqi ass to kick. It quotes a major saying that if there were foreign jihadis in one village, “we’ll make it rubble.” Instead they wandered around, tore up people’s houses, stole their pillows, beat up a few of them, yelled at them in pidgin Arabic, and then went away, wondering what the hell they’d been doing there. Mission accomplished.

Craig Murray, the British ambassador to Uzbekistan fired by Blair’s government for telling the truth about human rights abuses there (they also tried to smear him as alcoholic and crazy) (in the general elections, he ran against Foreign Minister Jack Straw, and did pretty well), has a commentary in the Guardian.

Karimov is very much George Bush’s man in central Asia. There is not a senior member of the US administration who is not on record saying warm words about Karimov. There is not a single word recorded by any of them calling for free elections in Uzbekistan. ... When Jon Purnell, the US ambassador, last year attended the opening of a human rights centre in the Ferghana valley, he interrupted a local speaker criticising repression. Political points, Purnell opined, were not allowed.

I can’t wait to see if Scotty McClellan will still be urging restraint equally on the demonstrators and the government.

The long national nightmare is over

Condi Rice is visiting Iraq. Since it’s the first second [sorry, my bad; she was along for Bush's plastic turkey visit] time she’s ever been there, she feels qualified to tell the Iraqi people how well everything is going and that they should just have patience. “Iraq is emerging from a long national nightmare of tyranny into freedom,” she said.

Wonder if she knew that the phrase “long national nightmare” was first used in Gerald Ford’s inauguration speech, referring to the Nixon years? No, I really don’t: of course she didn’t know that.

She took the opportunity to give a new version, Mark XXIII I believe, of the explanation for how 9/11 required the invasion of Iraq, saying “This war came to us, not the other way around.” Mark XXIII incorporates the crusade for democracy into the argument. See, “The absence of freedom in the Middle East -- the freedom deficit -- is what produced the ideology of hatred that allowed them to fly airplanes into a building on a fine September day.” Note her awkward use of the pronoun “them,” rather than a term like hijackers, terrorists or Al Qaida; she’s hoping that if she glides quickly over that part, listeners won’t remember that none of “them” were Iraqis and that we started the War to Make the Middle East Safe for Democracy in precisely the Middle Eastern country that produced the fewest terrorists.







2 from the Sunday Times:

Error of the week

A teenager who forced open an industrial container in the New Zealand port of Ashburton was caught in an avalanche of peas that flooded through the open doors. The 17-year-old was trapped, unable to move, in a chest-high pile of peas and arrested after police used a forklift truck to free him.

Costume of the week

A protester was turned away from a government meeting in British Columbia, Canada, because he was protesting at the dumping of raw sewage by dressing up as a giant piece of faeces.

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!