Let history record you had me jumping in my seat

On the White House website: “President Celebrates Black Music Month at the White House.” Sure he does. “Let history record you had me jumping in my seat,” George said.

Bush also got to practice his Spanish today, whi the OAS (quoting Jose Marti, with whom Bush has soooo much in common) that “La libertad no es negociable.” And freedom is evidently a tide, which one day will reach Cuba. And then, presumably, go away again, as tides do. He said that democracy must deliver results: “They need to see that in a democratic society, people can walk in the streets in safety, corruption is punished, and all citizens are equal before the law.” He was in Florida at the time. Then he told the assembled delegates of 34 nations, “Let history record you had me jumping in my seat.”

Tuesday marks the same length of time elapsed since 9/11, 1365 days, as between Pearl Harbor and the surrender of Japan.

Whatever else you can say about the 6-3 Supreme Court decision that the feds can enforce federal laws even when they are stupid and conflict with state laws, in this case state laws legalizing marijuana for medical use, it did produce some uncharacteristic responses. The LA Times reports: “Marijuana Patients Remain Defiant.” Dude, there is no such thing as a “defiant” pothead. Mellow, that’s the word you’re looking for. And the head of the DEA says, “We don’t target sick and dying people.” Isn’t that nice to know? Can we have it in writing? Of course if enforcement of federal policies were effective, the sick would get sicker and the dying dyinger.

I’m of two minds about the legal basis of the case. I have a fairly expansive idea of the legitimate powers of the federal government, which I consider derive not just from the commerce clause but are inherent in its nature, its federal governmentness if you will. But the majority on the Court found that the power to ban non-economic distribution of marijuana (or indeed just possession, since you could be arrested for growing the stuff for your own use, pot that not only didn’t cross state borders but never even left your house) derived from Congress’s right under the commerce clause to ban economic sales of illegal drugs, and that’s a logic I don’t accept, a slippery-slope logic that allows for unlimited government intervention into citizens’ lives, if that intervention had some tenuous, seven-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon connection to illegal activity. (Update: oh dear lord, that’s the same argument Clarence Thomas made. I have agreed with Clarence Thomas. Unclean, so unclean....) (And O’Connor, who writes that this broad interpretation “threatens to sweep all of productive human activity into federal regulatory reach.” Which may be the first time toking up has been called productive human activity.)

The biggest asshole in all this: John Walter, the Drug Tsar, who responded to the ruling thus: “We have a responsibility as a civilized society to ensure that the medicine Americans receive from their doctors is effective, safe and free from the pro-drug politics that are being promoted in America under the guise of medicine.” So support for medical marijuana, such as the support expressed by 56% of Californian voters in 1996 (including me), is insincere, compassion for cancer and AIDS and MS and glaucoma patients merely a guise, a ruse, a cunning deception to cover our fiendish pro-drug politics.

Walter also said, “Our national medical system relies on proven scientific research, not popular opinion.” Unless it involves stem cells, condoms, persistent vegetative states....

What to do with the Bastille of our times

When Laura Bush visited a school in Egypt, all the teachers and all the students were replaced by others who didn’t look so... poor.

The Chinese consul for political affairs in Australia tried to defect, offering to tell all about Chinese spies operating in Oz, but was turned down. I don’t know if anything’s behind this other than the Aussie government being scared of China, but there might be an interesting story here.

Eric Umansky argues that closing Guantanamo might make the US even less transparent and accountable, while failing to actually reduce the amount of torture or the number of secretly held prisoners, and increasing the resort to “rendition.” What he’s really worried about though, and rightly, is that without the symbol, the world (and especially Americans) will lose all interest in the treatment of prisoners (Umansky says shutting down Gitmo would be only a symbolic victory, but he values it precisely for its symbolic value). Guantanamo is the brand name for torture news; a generic won’t capture the same share of America’s attention span (nearly a year and a half after the Abu Ghraib revelations, when we were told Abu Ghraib would be handed over to the Iraqis or possibly razed, neither has happened and no one pays much attention to what happens inside its walls anymore). Guantanamo does have propaganda value, but sometimes you just have to storm the Bastille because it’s the right thing to do. Rumsfeld, Gonzales and the other supporters of “stress positions” and detention without trial claim to be pragmatists; those of us on the other side must be idealistic and absolutist in our rejection of torture.

One positive about Guantanamo having become another of those place names that stands in for historical events, like Vietnam, Hiroshima, and Intercourse, Pennsylvania, is that it becomes less usable for other purposes. In the early 1990s, Bush the Elder held Haitian refugees intercepted at sea there; like his son, he refused Amnesty International requests to interview the prisoners and claimed that American political asylum laws didn’t apply there. It will be a long time before Gitmo can be put to such a use again.

Condi divides the Americas

Condi Rice spoke to the general assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS) and once again made democracy sound like a threat.

“The divide in the Americas today is not between governments from the Left or from the Right. It is between those governments that are elected and govern democratically -- and those that do not.” Condi does not agree to disagree; she does not have to debate or discuss with governments that have different ideologies and polices from her own, because she can dismiss those governments as illegitimate, even if they happened to win an election. “Together, we must insist that leaders who are elected democratically have a responsibility to govern democratically. And ... governments that fail to meet this crucial standard must be accountable to the OAS.” Governing democratically is a good thing. I’m in favor of leaders who are elected democratically governing democratically. But that’s a pretty subjective standard, and I don’t see that the OAS has the standing, the moral authority or the freedom from United States dominance to apply it.

She mentioned plans to build an “International Law Enforcement Academy” to train Latin American police. Sounds like the School of the Americas, only hidden away in El Salvador so it can operate below the radar.


Obey me! OBEY ME!!

Can’t... resist... really... obvious... joke....

Joe Biden criticizes Howard Dean for saying that many Republicans have never earned an honest living. Guess that means that when you run for president in ‘08 you’ll be plagiarizing someone else’s speeches, huh Joe?

What kind of asshole is John Bolton?

After the tsunami: forced or coerced marriages of under-aged girls in India.

Under the Same Sun has a 2002 George Monbiot column from the Guardian about the United States’s successful effort, led by John Bolton, to fire and trash the reputation of Jose Bustani, the director-general of the UN’s Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Bustani’s efforts to get his inspectors – who unlike UNSCOM’s inspectors did not also work covertly for the US government – into Iraq, threatened to undercut Bush’s rationale for going to war. I’m not sure this makes Bolton less qualified to be ambassador to the UN than he was before: where some of the earlier stories suggested he was an out-of-control asshole, chasing women down hotel corridors and yelling at them, this one suggests that he was an asshole-for-hire, doing exactly the hatchet job he was supposed to do. Not that he can’t be more than one type of asshole. I think it’s called multi-tasking.

RSS feeds

A nice mention of this blog in the Google discussion group Informed Dissent today said that I don’t have an RSS feed. I do. Two in fact. I created a Feedburner feed last week in a failed (?) attempt to eliminate the problem where Bloglines doesn’t always display my photos. The addresses of those feeds are now in the right-hand column, below the archives.

If there’s anything else I can do to make this site more easily accessible, short of telephoning you all individually to read you my latest post, or if you have any other suggestions, short of fucking myself or stop hurting America by criticizing the president, drop me an email.

In this post is revealed, at long last, what is wrong with the world

Not being British, I often only hear about BBC radio shows when there’s only an episode or two left in their current run. Anyway, I just listened, online, to “I’m Sorry, I Haven’t a Clue,” a comedy in quiz show format sort of thing. For example, 2 panelists have to invent a letter from Sir Walter Raleigh to Queen Elizabeth I, speaking alternate words. Sing the lyrics from “You’ve lost that loving feeling” to the tune of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer; do the same for “Who let the dogs out” to the Toreador Song from Carmen. I think that episode will be replaced online by the next episode sometime Monday.

The judge who will try Saddam Hussein says that Saddam’s morale has collapsed because “He understands the extent of the charges against him and that he will stand trial before an impartial court.” An impartial judge wouldn’t be making statements like that to the press. The Observer adds that it isn’t clear if Saddam knows about the pictures of himself in his droopy underpants appearing all over the world, including this very website.

Bush’s rejection of the US doing anything to support Tony Blair’s plan to increase to aid to Africa, “It doesn’t fit our budgetary process,” seems especially blithe and dismissive not just towards Africa, which we know he doesn’t care about, but towards Tony Blair, his most reliable ally in the world. Didn’t throw him even a bone, just a bland and not very meaningful phrase (budgetary process?) such as you might use before hanging up on a telemarketer or walking past a pan-handler. Bush’s preferred alternative is forgiving African debt, and then reducing future money to the continent by the exact amount of the forgiven debt.

Condi Rice, in an interview with the Miami Herald which the paper points out more than once is an exclusive, pushes the idea of the OAS stepping up its intervention in the politics of its member states. Well, she calls it being proactive in supporting democracy, but the only two countries she brings up are Haiti and Venezuela, in both of which the Bush admin has supported coups against democratically elected leaders. Speaking about the UN force occupying Haiti, she says, “We’re going to need to look hard at whether not the force posture there is adequate as we get to the run-up in elections”. Because nothing says free and fair elections like a really strong “force posture.”

I mentioned Rumsfeld’s latest attack on Al-Jazeera in my last post, but now I’ve seen more of it, and it’s not pleasant. “Quite honestly, I do not get up in the morning and think that America is what’s wrong with the world. The people that are going on television, chopping off people’s heads is what’s wrong with the world.” In case you were wondering exactly what’s wrong the world, now you know. “And television networks that carry it and promote it and are Johnny-on-the-spot every time there’s a terrorist act are promoting it.” The Johnny-on-the-spot thing is of course a not terribly veiled accusation that Al-Jazeera is in cahoots with terrorists and knows about terrorist acts before they occur.

Does my use of the word cahoots in the previous sentence indicate that when I read Rummy’s words I begin to talk like him? Why goodness gracious no.

Governments have to be accurate. Extremists don’t

Secretary of War Rummy Rumsfeld criticizes China for the increase in its military budget: “Since no nation threatens China, one wonders: why this growing investment?” No nation threatens China? Isn’t it kind of a threat when the nation with the largest military budget suggests to the nation with the third-largest that its military is too well-funded and acquiring too many advanced weapons? What did Rummy hope to accomplish? Obviously China wasn’t going to respond by saying Why you’re right, what were we thinking, building ballistic missiles when no nation threatens us, our bad. Mostly I expect the speech was a threat that if China didn’t put more pressure on North Korea, he’d start berating them in public.

That said, while Rummy is a terrible spokesmodel, calling for the US to have “rods from God” and bunker-buster nukes and so on while telling everybody else who tries to upgrade their military (Venezuela as well as China) to content themselves with pointed sticks, it is true that China’s military expansion is designed to give it offensive capabilities, so it can operate outside its borders and invade or coerce Taiwan, and this is a Bad Thing. And this is the 16th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, so I’m not having especially warm & fuzzy thoughts for Beijing today.

Rummy also criticized Al Jazeera, again, for daring to broadcast the views and actions of terrorists, especially the beheadings, Rummy has a real thing about beheadings. He thinks terrorists are bad, and terrorism is bad, but doesn’t trust that people watching them on tv will draw the same conclusion. The problem, he says with a straight, albeit troll-like, face is that the bad guys can lie: “Governments have to be accurate. Extremists don’t.”


The South Korean minister of defense (left) is still laughing, not realizing that Rumsfeld wasn’t joking when he told him to lick his shoes.

There is a 70% to 80% chance you will be OK

I’ve seen 132 of the 149 movies on the USC film school’s must-see list, and 91 of Time magazine’s top 100 films. For whatever that’s worth.

The Pentagon, which has been allowed to get away with not specifying just how Korans were defiled in Guantanamo, releases — gee, is it Friday already? — details of one of the incidents, in which a guard accidentally urinated on a Koran when he was trying to urinate on a prisoner. So that’s ok then. (Actually, he claims the whole thing was an accident, he just happened to pee near an air vent.) Also a guard kicked a Koran, and an obscene inscription was written in another — two words, they don’t say which ones.

Basra announces that its tourism business is now open again. They suggest that foreigners disguise themselves as natives, dye their hair black, and travel with armed bodyguards, but if they do that, “Then there is a 70% to 80% chance you will be OK,” says the head of the tourism office. Plan your vacations accordingly. The Guardian says, “When not disguised, westerners tend to be greeted warmly, if curiously. ‘Problem in the head? Why are you here?’ one waiter asked the Guardian.”

Lakoff and the language of reproductive rights

Lately, the Republicans have made great efforts to take control of the vocabulary in which issues are discussed. They’re personal accounts, not private accounts, and don’t ever call it privatization, we’re told; it’s the constitutional option, not the nuclear option; the prisoners were mistreated or at worst abused, not tortured, and certainly not in a gulag. For a party led by a man who doesn’t know the difference between disassemble and dissemble and can’t pronounce nuclear, the R’s sure know how to control a debate by grabbing the commanding lexical heights.

As someone interested in the use, abuse and misuse of language in politics, I’ve been following linguist George Lakoff’s work off and on since reading an article of his — this one I think — during the first Gulf War about the use of metaphor by Bush the Elder et al in their arguments in favor of going to war. I haven’t gotten around to Don’t Think of an Elephant — expensive for such a short book, and always checked out of the library — but I got the impression that he was better at deconstructing how Republicans framed their arguments than at helping Democrats construct their frames. His AlterNet article posted yesterday on reproductive rights issues suggests that he has now put the cart entirely before the horse, suggesting that D’s drop not only the words “abortion” and “choice,” but back down from the policies themselves in favor of ones that can be better framed. Being smart about how one presents policies to the public is one thing, subordinating the, uh, choice of policies to PR is quite another.

The word abortion, Lakoff says, suggests a situation in which “something has gone terribly wrong,” and the word choice comes from a consumerist vocabulary, whereas “life” comes from a moral vocabulary, and morality trumps consumerism. So whoever uses the most pompous, sanctimonious language wins? That would only be the case if everyone shared the same view of morality; Jerry Falwell and Tony “I’m not even going to swat that fly” Perkins may use the word “life” all they want, but it won’t be persuasive to those who don’t think like them.

Having stripped us of the words choice (he prefers decision, as less frivolous-sounding — Margaret Sanger coined the term “family planning” for similar reasons — but the word choice entails not only the act of choosing but the right to choose; also, “pro-decision movement” sounds goofy) and abortion (to which he offers no alternative), he wants to shift the debate to issues he thinks can be better packaged, like “zero tolerance [!] for unwanted pregnancies,” which R’s are helping to increase the number of by preventing access to contraception and sex ed., and the excessive infant mortality in America, mercury and other toxins in breast milk from right-wing environmental policies. On these issues, he says, the left’s policies are the ones that value life. Which is true, of course, but all those issues are practical, pragmatic ones, but he’s suggesting giving up or severely downplaying support of human rights — the rights of privacy and bodily integrity — in favor of them, which does not seem to me like taking the moral high ground, but ceding it.

He then suggests foregrounding rape victims as the women most in need of access to abortion, which is the mirror-image of the right-to-lifers’ slippery-slope strategy of making inroads on the right to abortion by first eliminating the most squirm-inducing type of abortion, so-called partial-birth abortion.

As I said at the start, the right wingers have been attempting, with a great deal of success, to force their opponents to debate using a vocabulary chosen by the right. Yesterday the NYT noted that the groups which place excess embryos created during fertility treatment in the wombs of good Christian women have been trying to replace the term “embryo donation” with “embryo adoption,” and that that language has been dutifully taken up by the government. The term is intended to implant the notion that life begins at conception. Personally I worry less that this sort of thing will increase the status of clumps of cells to that of human children, than that blurring the line between them will subtly reduce the status of actual living human beings, whose minds and meat are just casings for a soul which was already perfectly realized shortly after daddy ejaculated.

You know, I don’t worry all that much, frankly. ... I’ve got peace of mind.

Bush: “I spend most of my time worrying about people losing their lives in Iraq, both Americans and Iraqis”. But, “You know, I don’t worry all that much, frankly. ... I’ve got peace of mind.”

Which piece?

I could have gone so many different directions with that: references to peas, the peace that passeth all understanding, etc etc. Seriously, dude, you’ve gotta give us more challenging straight lines than “I’ve got peace of mind.” The American people expect better — nay, they deserve better.

Nay?

So before the US sent Canadian (and Syrian) citizen Maher Arar to Syria to be tortured in 2002, they offered to return him to Canada if it promised to arrest him and put him in jail. Canada responded that it had no grounds to do so, and you’re not the boss of me, and so off Arar went for a year of hell. Bill Graham, then foreign minister, now defense minister, apologized — boy, Canada is not America — to Arar for not getting him out of Syria earlier.

The Latvian parliament ignores the French and the Dutch and votes 71-5, with 24 abstentions, to ratify the EU constitution. An earlier attempt was aborted when it turned out to be a really bad translation, with hundreds of mistakes.

3 years ago (Feb. 2002), after 6 Israeli soldiers were ambushed and killed, the Israeli government ordered a revenge operation to kill unarmed Palestinian cops, preferably at least 6 of them (12 were, plus 3 other people) according to 2 of the soldiers who took part in those missions. The Israeli army responded today by claiming that the cops, who manned checkpoints, had let terrorists pass through them. So it was good revenge, not bad revenge. Either way, that’s not what the 2 soldiers say; they say it was pure tit for tat.

Izvestia is in the process of being bought by the state gas company. Having taken over all Russian tv, Putin is now trying to neutralize the print media.

Responding to less than complimentary statements by Dick Cheney about North Korea, NK responds: “Cheney is hated as the most cruel monster and blood-thirsty beast as he has drenched various parts of the world in blood.”

And your point is?

The g-word

The ferocity of the concerted verbal assault by Bush, Cheney, Myers and Rumsfeld on Amnesty International caught me by surprise. I’d have expected a mock-dignified silence, in the hope that it would go away, which, sad to say, would probably have worked. But after successfully demonizing Newsweek, they’ve decided that vicious attacks might silence critics of Guantanamo altogether. Sadly, that may work too.

The message is that Amnesty’s use of the g-word somehow means we can ignore them now. Cheney: “For Amnesty International to suggest that somehow the United States is a violator of human rights, I frankly just don’t take them seriously.” (Somehow? We saw the pictures.) Rummy: “those who make such outlandish charges lose any claim to objectivity or seriousness.” The word “absurd” has also been bandied about.

Myself, I was critical of Amnesty when it failed to condemn the US for force-feeding hunger-striking inmates at Guantanamo.

Secretary of War Crimes Rumsfeld suggested that the word gulag can’t be used because “Most would define a gulag as where the Soviet Union kept millions in forced labor concentration camps,” as if an analogy has to be exact, right down to the uniforms and haircuts, before it has any salience. Using that standard, we’d never learn anything from history, which is of course the point.

A reporter asked Rummy whether removing the prisoners from Cuba to the US would increase transparency and oversight. Rummy: “Oh, my goodness. There’s so much transparency in Gitmo and so much oversight.”

The suggestion that Amnesty didn’t pay attention to Saddam Hussein’s crimes against his people is, to steal a word from the Bushies, absurd. In fact, one of Britain’s pre-war “dossiers” was largely culled from old Amnesty reports.

Somebody threw that number out there, and it stuck

Operation Lightning is evidently lightening. Although the operation was designed to make it appear that the Iraq military could handle the country’s security, it was clear that it fielded nowhere near as many soldiers as the 40,000 claimed by the Iraqi regime. Yesterday, Pentagon spokesmodel Bryan Whitman said, “Somebody threw that number out there, and it stuck. I don’t know where it came from. We certainly didn’t put it out.”

Sure, if by “we” you don’t mean George W. Bush, General Carter Ham (possessor of the WASPiest name in Christendom), General Richard Myers, Katie Couric, the WASPiest woman in Christendom (during an interview with Myers, who doesn’t correct her), etc. I was about to ask why they bother lying about things so easily googled, when I realized that the NYT hadn’t bothered to fact-check him. Whitman added, “More important than the total numbers is that this is a sizable Iraqi operation that demonstrates that Iraqi security forces are operating in greater numbers and with greater effectiveness.” Don’t try giving that answer on a math quiz: “More important than how many balls Susie had after she gave 3 to Jimmy...”

The Knights Who Say Nee: By a vote of more than 61%, the Dutch have crushed the dreams of the Eurocrats beneath their shoes, which rumor says are made of wood. Don’t know myself; the one time I tried to go to the Netherlands, Belgium was on strike and my train stopped at the border.

British soldier Mark Cooley — the one driving the forklift —

was sentenced to 2 years, but only served 4 months before being released, his sentence reduced by a closed-door hearing news of which the military clearly hoped wouldn’t leak out.

Turkey’s new penal code abolishes legal leniency for honor killings and the annulment of rape convictions if the victim marries the rapist, and makes several other welcome steps forward. Criticizing the state or asserting that the Armenian genocide actually happened are still illegal.

Meet Dominique Marie François René Galouzeau de Villepin

A British couple will celebrate their 80th anniversary tomorrow. The secret is evidently saying sorry and Yes dear. Oh, and not dying. (The Telegraph’s front page has their wedding photo.)

As expected, Jacques Chirac fired his prime minister, blaming the failure of the EU referendum on Raffarin’s unpopularity rather than his own or that of the proposed constitution. And because French politicians have been considered out of touch lately, Chirac replaced him with Dominique Marie François René Galouzeau de Villepin (which is French for Little Lord Fountleroy), who is both a poet and an aristocrat. Dominique Marie François René Galouzeau de Villepin has never run for elective office, because he considers himself above that sort of thing, saying “My only party is France,” which is very Charles de Gaulle of him, very Sun King. French people consider him to be arrogant.

After a suicide bomb attack on a Shiite mosque in Pakistan, Shiites retaliated by burning down a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet, possibly because they think Americans worship fried chicken, or because there is a little-reported religious war between Shiites and Kentuckians, who can say for sure?

From the Onion:

U.S. Intensifies Empty-Threat Campaign Against North Korea

WASHINGTON, DC—During a recent press conference, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice issued another warning to North Korea, escalating the U.S. empty-threat campaign against the nation. “Make no mistake, if Kim Jong Il does not put a stop to the manufacturing of plutonium in his nation, we will come down on him quite hard,” Rice said. “We demand compliance, and if we don’t get it, then watch out.” Rice went on to say that noncompliance would result in some action that “would be very bad indeed,” adding that North Korea does not want to know what it will be in for.

And an excellent What Do You Think? too:

The House recently passed a bill lifting restrictions on stem-cell research, but Bush has threatened to veto the bill if it passes the Senate. What do you think?

“The Democrats and Republicans-and most of the American public-are actually in agreement over an issue. You can see how Bush would want to put a stop to that right away.”

“Some things are just morally reprehensible, like using science to save people’s lives.”

“Hey, if it weren’t for scientific research, Christopher Reeve would’ve died on that polo field and none of this would even be an issue in the first place.”

“The Democrats want stem-cell research so they can cure multiple sclerosis. The GOP wants it so they can grow an army of zombies. So Bush is in a tough spot politically.”

“They’re not stems, they’re babies! And they’re not cells, they’re babies! And it’s not research, it’s babies!”

Summer reading

Oopsy: This is the Pentagon statement on the seizure of Mohsen Abdul-Hamid: “Following the interview it was determined that he was detained by mistake and should be released. ... Coalition forces regret any inconvenience...” First, don’t blame it on a “coalition” when it was a purely American operation. Second, an “interview” starts with being asked to sit and would you like some coffee, not with having a hood thrown over your head and being dragged out of your house. Third, a bigger lexicological problem continues to be that word “mistake”: it’s a day and a half later, and the Pentagon still hasn’t clarified the nature of the mistaken behooding and seizure of the head of the largest Sunni party, and nobody seems to be asking them to do so.

Gary Indiana’s new book The Schwarzenegger Syndrome: Politics and Celebrity in the Age of Contempt sounds like fun, if a bit pricey ($13.57 at Amazon for 140 pages), according to the Village Voice review. Here’s a quote: “to the bewildered and traumatized who continued to imagine that ‘fascism’ described a condition other than the merger of the state with corporate capitalism, ‘hasta la vista, baby’ sounded like as workable a program as anything else.”
(Update: on the other hand, Marc Cooper hates the book.)

And as long as we’re talking books, Human Events, right-wing morons since 1944, list the 10 most harmful books of the 19th and 20th century, starting with the Communist Manifesto and including the Kinsey Report (#4) and The Feminine Mystique (#7), but not the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which actually was and is harmful. Not even in the honorable mentions. Marx is the only author who appears twice, and yes Das Kapital could be very harmful if you dropped it on your toe. I only own 3 or maybe 4 (I’m not sure if Beyond Good and Evil is among my very modest Nietzsche collection), so perhaps I haven’t been too badly damaged. Next up from the Human Eventers: the 10 most harmful ballets of the 19th and 20th century.

Bush press conference: trained in some instances to disassemble

Bush held a press conference today, in which reporters with names like Stretch asked questions, and Bush responded by stuttering through a series of catch-phrases. He is not getting more articulate over time.

Asked about the Amnesty International "new gulag" report, he repeated the word "absurd" over and over. Reading rather than listening to the press conference, I imagined him flapping his arms and uttering "absurd" in the voice of Daffy Duck, but that's just me.

In terms of the detainees, we've had thousands of people detained. We've investigated every single complaint against the detainees. It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth. And so it was an absurd report. It just is.

Thousands detained, and for some reason, they hate America. And they've been trained to "disassemble" -- oh how I hope that isn't a transcript error -- as opposed to picking it up the street, or in the backroom of a Houston bar, like you did George.
(Update: it isn't an error, he really said it! The man is Cliff Claven and Ted Baxter rolled up into one!)

Asked to condemn the massacre in Uzbekistan, George seemed to think there wasn't enough evidence yet, and called for the International Red Cross to investigate. Preferably for two or three years.

He described the demand by Senate D's for documents about John Bolton as a "stall tactic." Like every one of his answers at this press conference.

Says progress on Social Security is "like water cutting through a rock." No, no, it's paper covers rock, rock breaks scissors, how many times do we have to explain it to you, but each time Dick Cheney makes a fist (and Dick Cheney always does rock), you urinate on his hand and yell "Ha ha, I win."

(Update: writing this post quickly at the library, I missed what Bob caught: the wonderful counterpoint of Bush defending Gitmo while lecturing Putin about the 9-year sentence given to Yukos chairman Mikhail Khodorkovsky today: "as I explained to him, here you're innocent until proven guilty, and it appeared to us, or at least people in my administration, that it looked like he had been judged guilty prior to having a fair trial. In other words, he was put in prison, and then was tried." Because of course, first you put them in prison, and then you declare them enemy combatants who hate America.)

Nightline

A friend in Vermont informs me that Nightline’s reading of the names of dead tonight has commercials, including one for the Vermont National Guard. What other commercials have people seen? Drop me an email at:

whateveritisimagainstit
at
gmail
dot
com.

Include the city the station is located in.

A mistake

I guess as part of “Operation Lightning,” the US first arrests — sorry, I meant to say seizes; arrest, the verb widely used in news stories, suggests a process of law — the head of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party, throwing a bag over his head (why do American police never do that when they arrest people, or will the practice be imported from Iraq within a year or two, I wonder), then releases him, saying the arrest was a mistake. No fucking kidding. Some news media are taking that to mean a case of mistaken identity, but that’s not what was said. Here’s a detail I like: Prime Minister Jaafari ordered an investigation. Hey, the American military didn’t even inform you before grabbing up Hamid, how are you going to get them to cooperate with an investigation? Isn’t it cute when they pretend to be in control?

The chief of police in Basra says he’s lost control of the police force, which is heavily infiltrated by sectarian groups who are using police cars in assassinations. And Basra’s the one peaceful area outside Kurdistan.

Cheney: “For Amnesty International to suggest that somehow the United States is a violator of human rights [in Guantanamo], I frankly just don’t take them seriously.” The head of Amnesty’s US branch responds nicely, “He doesn’t take torture seriously; he doesn’t take the Geneva Convention seriously; he doesn’t take due process rights seriously; and he doesn’t take international law seriously.”

Cheney went on, “Occasionally there are allegations of mistreatment. But if you trace those back, in nearly every case, it turns out to come from somebody who has been inside and been released ... to their home country and now are peddling lies about how they were treated.” I’ve said before, the Bushies have lost the ability to distinguish between proving a case and just making an assertion. Notice how he starts as if he had actual evidence he was going to present — “if you trace,” “in nearly every case,” “it turns out” — and then peters out into, well they were lying. An argument, it has been said before, isn’t just contradiction, the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes. And in denying that any human rights were violated in Gitmo, he’s also gainsaying the photos we’ve all seen. And the 1,000 pages of Gitmo tribunal documents released to AP under the Freedom of Information Act on this fine holiday weekend, which show the tribunals ignoring every complaint. You can read the documents here.

By the way, in the same interview, Cheney accused Kim Jong Il of running a police state.

Speaking of big round cheeses, today was the traditional Gloucestershire cheese roll, in which a 7-pound circular cheese is rolled down a hill, reaching speeds of up to 70 mph, and a bunch of crazy Brits roll after it. The survivor gets the cheese. Yes that’s him, clutching his prize as they take him to the hospital. The head of PETA complained that the event was not vegan.

Memorial Day

For someone with my beliefs and political perspective, blogging about Memorial Day may be a no-win situation, and I’d have happily avoided it if I hadn’t read and been deeply repulsed by Bush’s speech at Arlington today, in which he exploited the deaths of servicepersons in the service of his own goals. He quoted the farewell letter of Sgt Michael Evans (which I think means not his last letter, but a letter written to be opened if he was killed): “My death will mean nothing if you stop now.” Bush adds, “And we must honor them by completing the mission for which they gave their lives”. I don’t resent the sentiment coming from Evans; in the mouth of George W. Bush it becomes an obscenity. He’s hiding behind the honored dead.

Here are some more high points from Bush’s speech: “Across the globe, our military is standing directly between our people and the worst dangers in the world... freedom is on the march... blah blah liberty blah”.

What does he mean by worst dangers in the world, by the way? Wouldn’t those be biological, chemical and nuclear weapons, the things Iraq did not have?

The precariousness in rising to protest that bilge is that while I stand in awe of the idealism of those who volunteer to risk their lives in the what they see as the cause of liberty and freedom, I consider them to have been flim-flammed. I do consider Michael Evans’s death to have meant not very much, at least not what he wanted it to mean, and what he had a right to have it mean, if he was going to be sent into harm’s way. There aren’t so many idealistic people in the world, even among the young (Evans was 22), that we can afford to have their idealism canalized into the wrong paths.

Under George Bush, 1,647 soldiers have died, 12,630 wounded.


No, Mr. President, the pretty flowers are not for you.

It is your sovereign decision and I take note

In Latvia, hundreds of farm animals have been killed this weekend by swarms of flies.

A NYT Styles section article on how expensive it is to provide teenagers all the toys they require to maintain their social standing (iPods, portable DVD players, cellphones with cameras, etc) is headlined, “‘But I Neeeeeeed It!’ She Suggested.” (The author was probably thinking of what an English professor once described as the greatest sentence in English literature, by Ring Lardner: “‘Shut up,’ he explained.”)

The rest of this post will be devoted to the French referendum.

I’m moderately pleased with the French rejection of the proposed European Union constitution (55% to 45%, on a turnout of 70%), a document I disliked for its failure to significantly democratize the EU’s institutions, for its subordination of EU foreign policy to NATO, and because I think it will be bad for workplace rights. Apostate Windbag makes roughly the same arguments, at greater length, as does Doug Ireland, who also makes some predictions for what the rejection will mean in France and beyond.

I would be more than moderately pleased if 1) xenophobia and racism didn’t play such a large part in the defeat, albeit alongside more worthy motives, and 2) I had a clearer idea what will happen next (it would also be nice if the progressives who oppose the draft constitution were clearer in expressing an alternative). The constitution will be enacted if 20 nations (of 25) sign up, and many are ensuring that by refusing to hold a referendum, as was the case with all 9 which have already ratified. But if it also fails in the Netherlands’ referendum Wednesday, Britain will have to cancel its own referendum plans. Blair was hoping that the majority opposing the EU const now would be changed by the time of referendum by a sense of inevitability, which is now lost. While he could skip the referendum and get his tame Parliament to sign up, it would look bad, really really bad, and do great damage to the Labour party.

The constitution can, and may well be, forced through against the wills of the majority of the population of Britain, France and several other EU nations (possibly after some minor cosmetic rewriting), but that would just increase Europeans’ estrangement from their own governments and the EU’s. Once it became clear that today’s referendum would fail, if not by how much, French politicians started talking about holding a second one later in the process (the Danes were forced to re-vote on the Treaty of Maastricht after first rejecting it in 1992), to give the French people the opportunity to see the error of their ways and make the right and inevitable decision, which is exactly the sort of elite arrogance that the French voters threw le poop at today. They’ve been treated for years (all Western Europeans have) to condescending talk about the inevitability of EU integration and the free market, the sort of thing Thomas Friedman says about globalization, and you know how irritating it is listening to Friedman talk about globalization.

This defeat also puts off for years any possibility of Turkey entering the EU, I would think.

(Update:) Chirac: “France has expressed itself democratically. It is your sovereign decision and I take note.” Great, ‘cause their may be a short quiz later.

Lightning!

Operation Lightning has begun, whereby 40,000 Iraqi and 10,000 American soldiers will entirely shut down the sprawling city of Baghdad, thus ending attacks in the city because, as we know, the insurgents all live in the suburbs and commute to work every morning, just like the dads in old sitcoms.

Extry, extry, read all about it

Many news sites (according to news.google.com) used this Reuters story, but only the Washington Post had the flair to headline it “Pakistanis Find Bloodied Head of Suicide Bomber.” Really, let’s all take a moment to bask in the exquisite gruesomeness of those words.

The Democrats who are clamoring for this have already voted against John Bolton

The White House is determined to distance itself from any attempts at bipartisanship, refusing to hand documents over to the Senate which the D’s say bear on John Bolton’s fitness to serve as ambassador to the UN. Sez Scotty McClellan, “The Democrats who are clamoring for this have already voted against John Bolton. This is about partisan politics, not documents. They have the information they need.” What Scotty is forgetting is that the Senate is supposed to be a deliberative body, in which decisions arise out of open discussion and debate: the “clamoring” D’s may have made up their own minds, but they still have a perfectly legitimate need for information they can use to try to convince others to reconsider. That would be how it would work in a truly deliberative body where decisions weren’t based on party label, where congressional members of the president’s party are not expected to support his every decision mindlessly and automatically.

While the anti-immigrant lobby in the US talks about making driver’s licenses “real” identity cards, a London School of Economics study estimates that Tony Blair’s plan to introduce mandatory identity cards, with those neat biometrics and all the Orwellian bells and whistles (by the way, Eddie Albert’s obit says he played Winston Smith in a 1953 tv version of 1984; there’s probably a joke in that), would cost £300. Can you say “poll tax?” And the American government is insisting that it be able to read those cards too.

A NYT article about a federal case being tried in Vermont says that John Ashcroft overturned a deal reached by the US attorney to avoid the death penalty in this case, but fails to mention that it was Ashcroft’s policy to go for the death penalty in states that did not have it at the state level (the Clinton admin was more or less deferential to states’ policies). Remember, the next time Bush talks about the “culture of life,” that states which oppose the death penalty are being forced to host trials and provide jurors for these death-fests.

Speaking of the culture of life, Bush, in his weekly radio address, said: “Throughout our history, America has fought not to conquer but to liberate. We go to war reluctantly, because we understand the high cost of war.” Oh dear God I’ve gone blind! The glare of the whitewash has blinded me!

Do they really want to get this done

The WaPo stuffs some intriguing but underdeveloped Iraq stories inside a less interesting Iraq story, so you might have missed them: after a suicide car-bomb attack on an Iraqi military unit, American forces shot an Iraqi policeman and an ambulance driver arriving at the scene, the latter fatally.

Also, an Iraqi was shot dead “during the Marine and Iraqi forces sweep at Haditha, Lt. Col. Guy Rudisill, a military spokesman, said by e-mail.” The thing is, the Iraqi was a prisoner inside Abu Ghraib when he was hit. More details, please. Which reminds me: I read a brief item a day or two ago that said 3 prisoners had escaped Abu Ghraib; haven’t seen anything since. I’m not specifically blaming the WaPo, which went with what it had today, but the American media in general seem to have lost all interest in covering the details of military operations in Iraq.

The US turned down Venezuela’s request for the detention of Luis Posada Carilles Friday, despite the fact that he is under detention. Eli at Left I On the News was (justifiably) outraged that a State Department official who told the media that Venezuelan documents requesting the detention of Luis Posada Carilles were inadequate, did so anonymously. It was worse than Eli knew: a Saturday WaPo article quotes the official as suggesting Venezuela deliberately did this as part of a cunning plan:

But the Posada arrest request was so inadequate, the official said, that some U.S. diplomats believe Venezuela purposely drafted it so the United States would reject it.

“It leads one to ask the question, ‘Do they really want to get this done or is this in some way a public relations issue?’” said the State Department official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The official trashes another country this way from the shadows because of sensi-fucking-tivity? And lets him attribute opinions to “some US diplomats”: the person with such high standards of proof is allowed by the Post to give anonymous hearsay evidence. The Post calls this clown a “high-ranking” State Department official, which narrows it down considerably: I’d bet cash money it was Roger Noriega.

The US claims Venezuela gave no statement of evidence against Posada, which is just as insulting as the “Do they really want to get this done” speculation, since the US is in possession of much more evidence of ex-CIA employee Posada’s crimes than Venezuela is. If Venezuela has “inadequate” information, whose fault is that?

Give this turd a knock

In Hebron, an Israeli patrol stopped a Palestinian youth and asked if his family had satellite tv, then took over that house and kept the family locked in one room while they watched a soccer final in which Liverpool beat AC Milan.

Another day, another military acquittal for prisoner abuse in Iraq. Today it was Navy SEAL lieutenant Andrew Ledford who led a platoon which beat a prisoner who died a little later, but probably because of torture in Abu Ghraib (for which no one has been charged) rather than from the beating. Prosecutors suggested that he had failed as a leader because he not only didn’t order his men to stop the beating, but took his turn when asked to “give this turd a knock,” then posed for pictures (which don’t seem to be available). Although the other men didn’t testify to seeing him hit the prisoner, he had confessed to it himself in a sworn statement; on the stand, he recanted. His lawyer, who was also Sabrina Harman’s lawyer, asked, “Were they supposed to give (al-Jamadi) tea and cookies on the way from his apartment to a CIA interrogation?” Ledford will now be promoted.

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Censorship returns to South Africa. The Mail & Guardian, which used to run afoul of the apartheid regime, has been hit with a pre-censorship order, preventing the publication of the second part of a story about the ANC’s relations with an oil management company which funneled funds to it from a parastatal oil company. The judge found this story to infringe on the company’s privacy and dignity.

I can’t believe no one thought of it before: paid product placements (from Pepsi, as if more alliteration were needed) in a political ad. Schwarzenegger is a genius, I tell ya, a genius. I think all of us bloggers need to convince Arnie to start his own blog, ‘cause if anyone can figure out how to make blogging profitable...

The Poor Man on media balance:

1) I don’t know how many sides there are to each story. I know that a cube has six sides, and a record has two, but I don’t really know how many sides a story has, and I suspect it depends rather strongly on the particular story. If you decide that there are two sides to every story, remember that the two sides you are looking at are just the two loudest sides, and volume is very poor measure of quality.

2) There is a natural tendency to think that all opinions have some validity, and, by carefully plotting a conservative course somewhere between two representative arguments, you can make a serviceable approximation to something you could call “truth”. This is an admirable impulse, and often a constructive one, except if one (or both) of the positions is horseshit. Then, you’re fucked.

Credible, redux

A front-page article in the Thursday NYT said that the Guantanamo prisoner who made the Koran-flushing charge had been interviewed by the FBI but “was not able to substantiate the charge.” When I read that, I was going to make fun of it here, asking what sort of proof they were expecting, and then I realized, oh yeah, the smoking gun would be a soaking Koran. So I dropped the matter like, well, a soaking Koran, until I saw some military type on McNeil-Lehrer saying the prisoner had recanted. Gee, he’s being held without the benefit of any legal process in the “gulag of our times,” and he failed to repeat charges against the people who’d be watching over him, possibly for the rest of his life, far away from the eyes of the world. Quel surprise. The Pentagon repeats yet again that it has seen no “credible” allegations of Koran-dumping, and still fails to say what makes the allegations not credible. What I’m asking here is, what is the standard of evidence? A Pentagon spokesmodel quoted in the NYT disparaged the accuser as an “enemy combatant,” not to be believed. By that standard, you could do pretty much anything to an enemy combatant without fear. And indeed, am I right in thinking that the only soldiers convicted of prisoner abuse are the ones stupid enough to have done it while being photographed?

I’ve been enjoying the Pentagon’s flourishing of instructions it issued on the proper handling of the Koran. Reminds me that in the early days of Gulag Guantanamo, a lot of the interrogators were using a scholarly book from the 1970s about Islamic culture, which was used, to the horror of the family of the guy who wrote the book, who had quite liked Muslims, as a guidebook on what things to do to upset Muslims. The instructions no doubt served the same function.

Thursday two separate courts martial, one in the Army, one in the Marines, acquitted men who had killed unarmed Iraqis who had supposedly made threatening moves (in separate incidents). The killings may have been lawful acts of perceived self-defense, let’s assume they were. But the Marine also got away with having pumped 60 bullets into his two corpses and leaving them as an example with a sign saying “No better friend, no worse enemy,” and the Army sgt got away with having planted a gun on the body to make it look more like self-defense.

Maybe somebody will run on a war platform -- you know, vote for me, I promise violence

Meeting with Palestinian President Abbas, Bush makes the Palestinian elections sound like a Medieval mystery play: “Palestinians voted against violence, and for sovereignty, because only the defeat of violence will lead to sovereignty.” Later he speculated, “The President ran on a peace platform; you know, maybe somebody will run on a war platform -- you know, vote for me, I promise violence. I don’t think they’re going to get elected, because I think Palestinian moms want their children to grow up in peace just like American moms want their children to grow up in peace.”

When it came to Israeli actions, he was rather more muddled, making what Palestinians would see as distinctions without differences: “unauthorized outposts” must go, but not settlements, the Wall is ok only if it’s a security barrier, not a political barrier.

Shrub explains that he has a unique understanding of the Middle East: “You know, one of the things when you are in the position I’m in, I’m able to observe attitudes and opinions, and clearly there’s a lot of mistrust, and you can understand why.” Yes George, only you can see that there’s a lot of mistrust between the Israelis and the Palestinians, we bow before your superior insight.

He continues, “The only way to achieve all the objectives is for there to be a democracy living side-by-side with a democracy. And the best way to see -- to solve problems that seem insoluble now is for there to be a society which evolves based upon democratic principles.” If this means anything more than a string of his usual clichés, it’s that he’s placing the whole burden on the Palestinians to change their society before there can be peace, since Israel is already supposedly a democracy. Abbas responded strongly: “But democracy is like a coin; it has two sides. On one side is democracy; on the other side of the coin is freedom. It’s true, now we lack freedom and we are in dire need to have freedom. We do not live in freedom in our homeland. This will weaken the hope to continue this democracy, and will weaken the democratic march.”

Reuters and AFP photographers agree: Bush and Abbas look so much more impressive when shot from below.

The Americans have sold us out

In a story about the reintroduction of the death penalty in Iraq, the WaPo points out the irony that Coalition of the Willing (COW) countries like Britain which don’t have the death penalty, are fighting and dying to install and keep alive Iraqi politicians who then start executing their subjects. No executions have been carried out yet, legal executions I mean, but all the COW countries will be complicit in them.

A couple of days ago Laura Bush endorsed Egyptian President Mubarak’s plan to reform the electoral law by the smallest amount humanly possible, just prior to a referendum on those changes. This sort of intervention in another country’s elections is strictly verboten in international relations, and whoever it was — Condi Rice I assume — who fed Laura her words should not be sending messages to the Egyptian electorate through the First Lady, who was probably just lucky no reporter asked her to describe any details of the changes she was praising. Since then, demonstrators protesting the referendum, who evidently hadn’t gotten the word about Laura’s stamp of approval, and who were chanting “The Americans have sold us out” (which is simply incorrect: the Americans don’t care enough about them to sell them out; they gave them away) (also, were they really surprised to be sold out?) were beaten up by police. Robert Fisk has a useful article on Egypt in the Indy behind a pay barrier, but this search or this link should bring it up within a day or so.

The Post’s article on the centralization of power in fewer and fewer hands in both the executive and legislative branches in the Bush years, and the increase in secrecy and lack of transparency, is a good summary of these trends. I would have liked a longer analysis of the greatly increased practice, which I consider unconstitutional, of legislation being rewritten in conference committee. These process issues keep getting bound up with policy issues and they’re at least as important for the long-term health of the republic, but they’re harder to get the American people interested in. I was heartened that the polls consistently showed support for the right to filibuster; I was afraid that the R’s would successfully spin it as unfair and undemocratic, the minority threatening the majority, but Americans still like an underdog and dislike a bully, which is good to know.

And my government strongly supports stem cells

Since I keep seeing Google hits here from people looking for New York Magazine competitions, I’ve put all of the ones I ever excerpted in one place. These were comps very much like the Washington Post Style Invitational (something like the New Statesman comps, for my British readers).

A reporter asked Bush today why discarding 400,000 frozen embryos or leaving them frozen was better than using them for scientific research. He sidestepped completely: destruction of life, federal dollars, yadda yadda. Didn’t suggest what should be done with the 400,000. No one’s mentioning the millions of orphans that will be institutionalized until they’re 18 while Christian couples donate to other Christian couples their leftover (but Christian) embryos. Indeed, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the amusingly named president of Indonesia, a country with a much larger orphan population thanks to the tsunami, was standing right next to Bush while all this discussion was going on, possibly bemused by which ethical issues do or do not exercise the minds of the rich people of the West.


Evidently they don’t have milk cartons in Indonesia.

Here, George moves in to see if Bambang means what he thinks it means.




Later, and sweatier, Bush added, “And my government strongly supports stem cells.” He meant research on adult stem cells, but it’s still a telling slip. I’ve said before that by the end of his second term, fetuses (and now embryos) will have the right to vote, but their mothers won’t.

He went on, “there must be a balance between science and ethics.” By ethics, he of course means religion, and his use of the word balance shows once again that he thinks of science as being something intrinsically unethical, amoral, and irreligious, which must be balanced, i.e., kept in check by, ethics/religion.

It is not funny. It is cruel.

William Saletan makes at greater length the same point I did yesterday, that Bush’s rationale for opposing stem-cell research is precisely the opposite of his rationale for supporting the death penalty. And he’s got Bush quotes on each subject in neat parallel columns.

As you all must know, a hitherto obscure congresscritter from Alabama who rejoices in the name Spencer Bachus has issued a fatwa against Bill Maher, demanding that HBO cancel his show, which “is not funny. It is cruel,” without also telling them to get the next season of the Sopranos on the air sooner than 2006, the motherless motherfucks.

Do feel free to contact his office and tell them that his behavior is not funny, it is fascistic. If you need a few adjectives to add to that, you might watch an episode or two of Deadwood first.

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.