Big Deal

Clinton succeeds in getting Israel and Palestine to agree to do some of the things they promised they would do during the last "peace process". To put it into perspective, tomorrow is the 350th anniversary of the Treaty of Westphalia, ending the 30 Years' War. In those talks, 176 delegations represented 194 countries. They slept two to a bed, had lice, and still managed to end a major religious conflict with more grace than these clowns did. One point in common: long memories. The current pope refuses to attend the commemorations of a Peace that ended Church domination of Europe. Not that they'll ever acknowledge that. Currently, the Vatican and San Marino are allowed to mint a small quantity of Italian liras, and the Vatican thinks it can mint euros with a picture of the pope on them (and this after the British tabs kicked up a fuss about the queen's face not being allowed on the euro).

The Israelis actually threatened not to sign unless the US released Jonathan Pollard. This I suppose correctly acknowledges that the peace process means more to Clinton and the November elections than it does to Netanyahu, who never feels obligated to live up to Israeli promises he doesn't like.

The NY Times coverage of the Pinochet extradition has been unusually abysmal. A favorite, from today's paper: ""It's a legal matter among the Governments of the U.K., Spain and Chile," said a State Department official who insisted on anonymity. "The United States is not involved."" Oh yeah, you could see how such tough talk requires confidentiality. And you wouldn't know that the US is actively involved in pressuring both Spain and Britain.

Something to look for in American papers, that the British papers have been covering: the US's determined pressure on Britain not to extradite Pinochet to Spain. Interesting to see the Clinton Administration covering up for the Nixon administration's assistance to Pinochet.

Which links up rather interestingly with the current Middle East process. The Israeli press but, again, not the American, has for some time been reporting on the comings and goings in that country of top CIA officials. The CIA's role is as advisers to the Palestinian Authority in espionage, infiltration and interrogation (which explains all those recent torture deaths in Palestianian prisons), basically the same role as it had in the 1970s in Chile.

But how 'bout that Spanish judge who's going after Pinochet, being fought by his own conservative government the whole way?

William Safire refutes the argument that the US cannot afford an impeachment at this time of world crisis, saying that a superpower should be able to walk and chew up a president at the same time.

Recipe

London Times:

Error of the week

Birds tagged in America by the Washington Biological Survey used to wear metal tags that bore the inscription "Wash.Biol.Surv". But, according to New Scientist, the survey team recently received a letter from a camper in Arkansas. "Dear sirs, while camping last week I shot one of your birds. I think it was a crow. I followed the cooking instructions on the leg tag and I want to tell you it was horrible."

The inscription has now been changed to Fish And Wildlife Service.

Found on return a supplemental ballot pamphlet, answering the question, how can California have an election without a bond initiative. It can't. Prop 1A, a school construction bond measure, is disguised as the more trendy cause of class size reduction. However, since not one penny is to be spent on hiring teachers, I have to assume that it foresees spending 9 billion dollars to move the walls of classrooms closer together.

China has banned Chinese translations of the Starr Report as pornographic.

An ad in the TV Guide said that Sunday's football game would have more physical contact than the Starr Report.

Clinton originated, and then denied originating, a plan to get 34 Democratic Senators to declare in advance that they would not vote to convict Clinton in any impeachment process. OK, this would make clear what I said a week ago, that any impeachment with no chance of conviction was nothing more than an exercise in personal humiliation, but christ, how hamfisted can you get! The Senators would have to take an oath to try the case impartially. Republicans are rightly screaming jury tampering, but then again they're also calling jury tampering Clinton's attempts to fund-raise on behalf of candidates for Senate in close races as in NY.

In advance of NATO airstrikes, Russia has sold Serbia new, harder to hit, mobile surface to air missiles. This is not the act of an ally.

I heard much of the debate today, before heading into the C-Span-less halls of Alta Bates, and I have to wonder: what the fuck are these people thinking? A vote for impeachment is a vote for what, exactly? I doubt even Newt Gingrich's wet dreams are so unrealistic as to think that Clinton will actually be removed from office. Even if the Republicans do spectacularly well in November, they would need 1) at least 6 Democrats, which they probably won't get, 2) at least all of the Republicans, which believe it or not, they will not get. And underneath all the hoopla, they all must know that. So, since Clinton will never resign as long as he has one true-believer left (James Carville) to whisper in his ear, "Ken Starr would laugh his ass off if you did that", then impeachment can only be about humiliation. And will be seen as such.

Quick Starr Report quiz: Monica gave Bill her idea on how to improve education. The news reports all found that just darling, but tended to leave out what her idea was. Anyone know? Answer at the bottom of this e-mail.

So when Starr told the Appeals Court that it should force the White House lawyers to testify, saying that although Clinton did have a right to confidential advice from them in event of impeachment, we were a long way off from that, and it was so contingent an event that the court could safely ignore it. Three days later he secretly filed a motion before another bunch of judges asking permission to make an impeachment referral to Congress. He and Clinton should open a law firm together.

But let's say Clinton was removed or resigned. Who would Gore appoint as veep? Come to think of it, who will he appoint in 2000, and why have I heard no speculation about it? And would he be able to get his nominee confirmed by Congress?



Answer: Monica's idea was to pay the teachers more money.

This is my rifle, this is my gun

Last week the Pentagon was complaining about deteriorating readiness. Now we know what they meant. It seems their budget request includes $50 million for Viagra.

There is an article by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker just out, about the US bombing of the Sudan, which I haven't seen but which is probably quite interesting.

Italians are getting microchip homing devices implanted in case of kidnap.

Monica: a question

In all these transcripts, I'm curious as to whether Monica ever expressed an opinion as to whether Paula Jones's accusations were true.

Monica: "I'm like not a normal person."

I'm like totally disappointed that we didn't get actual tapes, since it's beginning to drive me crazy that I don't know what she sounds like, but there is one comment that suggests that she sounds like Marilyn Monroe. Happy birthday, Mr. President.

A question I asked facetiously a few months ago has surprisingly not been answered: what does Clinton call his penis? I still maintain that he is just the sort of person to have a name for it.

Elected in the German elections: the first MP to sport a mohawk (purple and green), a nose ring, and she is rumored to be pierced somewhere else as well. Welcome to the successor to the Communist Party.

Iraq's new list of urgent medical supplies it needs: liposuction machines, silicone breast implants, acme cream....

The Taliban, having escaped having their asses kicked by the Iranians, for now, are going after a bigger target, setting up training camps for Muslim separatists from Xinjiang province, China.

Sat, 3 Oct 1998

The NY Times web site is down, like it always is when I'm trying to send stories, so I'll just paraphrase:

1) a minister in Florida trying to make an analogy about sin being like Russian roulette shot himself with a blank in front of his congregation. Of course a blank shot from a .357 can, and did, kill you.

2) In a NY charter school, a 15-year old going up on stage at an assembly to receive an award as student of the month, dropped his gun on the way up. He is now suspended.

NY Times headline: "Older People Enjoy Sex, Survey Says".

In the 1950s Israel had agents go undercover as Arabs, some of whom took Muslim wives and had children. And then the program was wrapped up in 1959 and most of them left their Muslim wives and children.

Jiang Jemin, in a speech whose purpose was to show the continuing relevance of the Communist Party, praised if for having defeated the recent flooding (how, he didn't precisely say), comparing this victory to the one over the demonstrators at Tiananmen Square.

Faced with an odd reluctance to go into the military, the Russian army has been resorting to press gangs. Didn't Yeltsin promise to have the draft eliminated by just about now?

Such a thing as too much participatory democracy

From the CA. voter's pamphlet: "If horsemeat is outlawed, only outlaws will eat horsemeat"

Today's quiz: the largest parliamentary constituency in the world is located where? Answer at the very end.

The NY Democratic party is running D'Amato's ads. They're running the ads depicting NY City as a shark-like parasite stealing tax money from good farming ads, which D'Amato is running upstate, in NY City, and the ads he's showing in the city, showing support for him by mayors Benito Guiliani and Koch, upstate.

I got a fortune cookie with a misspelling today. I'm not sure what it means: "You are very expressive and positive in word, act and felling."

Everyone seems to be taking as meaningful the meaningless statements by the Iranian government that it is not now a threat to Salman Rushdie's life. The US and British government see it as in their current economic interests to declare victory and move on, ignoring the fact that the fatwa still stands and that Iranian foundation hasn't revoked the price on his head ($2.5 million--what does it mean that the reward has always been in even numbers in American money?).


Answer: Western Australia, over one million square miles. It is represented by a racist.

More thoughts on Cigargate

The Malaysian prime minister has deposed his deputy PM and had him arrested for sodomy. I wonder where he got the idea.

Tom Carson of the Village Voice wonders about the "cant that [Clinton's resignation] would be traumatic for the country--even though European leaders tarnished by scandal quit or get the boot pretty regularly, at no cost to democracy and a considerable gain in dispatch. Only the US treats its status quo, however, dismal, the way Doris Day treated her virginity."

Monica the dupe

The new Iranian president at the UN says that he wants cultural contacts with the US. And yet he seems pissed off at the forthcoming Radio Free Iran. His idea of an olive branch is to say how much he admires the Puritans.

I'm sorry, but if someone you're threatening with prosecution (Monica again) asks to see a lawyer, that's it, all questioning ceases. And the Starr inquisitors definitely have no right to suggest that any deal is conditional on her not talking with her lawyers.

It now seems that the prosecutors tried to get her to wear a wire on Vernon Jordan, and rather more interestingly that it was Linda Tripp who suggested that Monica contact Jordan to get her a job. This is interesting because the only tenuous connection between Whitewater and Monica was the alleged pattern whereby Jordan would get jobs as pay-offs for silence. Now it seems that this connection was actually created by Starr, acting through Tripp. Entrapment, in other words. Tripp also tried to get Monica to say that she wanted a job before she would sign a perjurous affidavit, surely a trap to get Clinton to bribe a witness into lying. Very underhanded, although there are plenty of prosecutors who will defend it as ordinary practice.

On a completely unrelated subject (wink wink), did you see where those Chicago cops found the real murderer (they say) after browbeating a couple of kids of, what was it, 6, 7 years old, into confessing in the absence of their parents or lawyers, and then realizing that little kids are unlikely to have also raped the victim? The cop that succeeding in getting the innocent to confess evidently has a reputation of getting children to confess, which is why he was brought in. Makes you wonder.

According to the NY Times, US intelligence inside Sudan was so terrible that it is now admitted that they couldn't have known, only "surmised" that the pharmaceutical plant made chemweapons on the side. Sudan supports or at least harbors terrorists, for sure, but there was a sort of institutional demonization of the country inside the US government because of previous warnings that Sudan planned to take the US, including assassinating Anthony Lake. These warnings were false, coming from agents who were taking CIA money and making up their reports (see Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana, John Le Carré, The Tailor of Panama).

Monica wanted a job in a PR company (she's certainly done great things for the reputations of every man she's ever been associated with) or George Magazine. Somewhere, John John is heaving a sigh of relief.

So the tapes were more boring than advertised. Which leads to the question, who did the advertising? Did Clinton's people leak the stories about him storming out and so forth, to make the actual tapes look anti-climactic? Even without that, and rather to my surprise, I came out much more sympathetic to the Big Creep than I expected. All the legalisms come across as justified, in context (well, most of them: the thing about not being alone with Monica is still a lie). The Jones case was about sexual harassment; only some aspects of his sex life were relevant to that case (if any), and he didn't tell them about the aspects that didn't, which were no one's business. This is why there was such a specific definition of sexual relations in that trial. If he actually made that case to the public, I think most of his PR problems would go away. No one could have missed the "sexual McCarthyism" of the questions, since the questions, rather than the answers, were what justified all those warnings about explicit content.

Most of the bits that the Judiciary Committee spent so much time arguing about redacting, were actually already in the Starr Report.

The rest of the world is laughing at us, but the rest of the world includes Egypt, where a court just ordered a female nuclear scientist and professor to bear children by her husband.

Happy 5759! No Y2K problem here.

Just saw the documentary on Angola Prison in Louisiana. I haven't seen so many people professing that god has forgiven them and hence everyone else should too since, oh, the last Clinton speech.

Henry Hyde was lying, according to the woman he had the affair with. Where Hyde says that he did the honorable thing and broke off the affair immediately after he was, well, caught, she says it was 2 1/2 years later. She also says he was also sleeping with other women and, less believably, that he told her he was not married. It seems she's not especially thrilled by their relationship of five to eight years depending on whose story you believe being passed off as a fling, a "youthful indiscretion" (a phrase that would have gotten Clinton's balls handed to him). D'you think all politicians are like this? I remember one of the early reactions to the Lewinsky thing, I think by Tom Carson of the Village Voice, was to wonder why Americans professed to find it axiomatic that power was more important than sex.

The Clinton Cabinet, the Post says, is indeed like America, in that its white male members are significantly wealthier than its minorities and women.

Bumper sticker seen on Highway 24: If you tailgate me I'll flick boogers at your windshield.

OK, in a few hours more we'll have a better idea of whether Clinton will resign, but it certainly can't be before this year's elections. Why? And I'm shocked at myself for not having thought of this before, and even more shocked that neither the NY Times nor the Washington Post seem to have either. The reason is that it has to be after January if Gore is to be able to run in 2004.

Remember that Israeli settler who last Thursday shot up a bunch of Palestinian high school students, killing one and severely wounding another? They let him out of jail for the holidays.

New Statesman competition

From a NS competition in which biblical stories were to be retold as by a modern author. In most of these, to know the choice is not to need to read more. For ex., Noah as by Hemingway: "When the call came, the old man knew what he had to do..." etc. The loaves and fishes as by Irvine Welsh (the author of Trainspotting): "Faithless wankers! spat Jesus--Shut it and wait." David & Goliath as by Frederick Forsyth (Day of the Jackal): "The momentum of the quicksilver carried it forward through the front of the pebble, shattering it into 2,143 tiny slivers, sharper than glass; 2,081 failed to penetrate the skull, but any 27 of the remaining 62 shards would have been enough." My favorite, in the style of Arthur Conan Doyle:

In the third week of November a dense fog settled over the eastern suburb of Eden where my father Adam resided with his housekeeper Eve.
"Nothing of interest in the paper, Cain? The Eden criminal is a dull fellow. Since the death of the serpent, that Napoleon of crime, no problem has arisen worthy of my talents. But what do I see in this field? A corpse. There is a spirituality about the face which arable farming does not generate. I judge that he was a shepherd. Since you and I are now the only males in existence I deduce that it is my son, Abel. The death-blow was a heavy one that could only have been delivered by a man, and I know that it was not I. We may congratulate ourselves, Cain, on the resolution of a curious, and in some respects unique, case. From the first we were puzzled by the remarkable lack of possible suspects. When you have eliminated the impossible, what remains, however improbable, must be the truth. You, Cain, are the murderer."
"Wonderful!" I ejaculated.
"Commonplace," said Adam.

Not unlike Clinton's semen-stain-in-the-shape-of-the-Madonna

NAPLES, Sept. 19-A flask of saint's blood appeared to liquefy today in the hands of Naples' cardinal, sparking immediate, impassioned debate among Italians over whether it was a sign of divine favor for the cardinal in a loan-sharking case.

Copyright 1998 The Associated Press

I see the Palestinians have opened their casino. Well, give them a reservation and they will act like Indians. Seems only fair.

The Republicans are insane. Who do they think they are, talking about ordering the FBI to investigate who leaked the Henry Hyde affair. 1) We do not investigate the free press. 2) The husband of the woman Hyde was fucking "leaked" the story, which is surely his to leak, end of story, full stop.

Margaret Cammermeyer, the lesbian kicked out of the Army National Guard who sued and won and was played by Glenn Close in the tv movie, has won the Dem. nomination for Congress in Washington state.

If anyone cares, which they don't, Congo-Kinshasa looks set to spiral into the African civil war to end all African civil wars, with half the continent's countries sending troops to one side or other, Angola because Unita is operating out of Congo and the Sudan in order to pay Uganda back for helping rebels in southern Sudan.

Monica had a pretty high security clearance. Of course she had that wonderful ability to keep secrets.

And the US claim some time back that Iraqi missiles had nerve gas on them turns out to be unconfirmable by any other country (France & Switzerland) that has tried to find the evidence.