Empty war heads

Bush wants pain and suffering in malpractice lawsuits limited to $250,000. That last sentence was of course fallacious. Bush couldn’t give a shit about limiting pain and suffering, he wants to limit compensation for doctors whose incompetence inflicts pain and suffering, or perhaps more importantly, for their insurance companies. Those insurance companies have, like everyone else who invests heavily in the market, not been doing that well, but they expect their other investments, in campaign donations to Republicans, to perform rather better. Naturally the insurance companies want to shift their losses from having bought stock in Enron to those who most deserve to bear them: those scheming bastards who have been crippled and tormented by the mistakes of their doctors. Bush of course said nothing about doing anything to reduce malpractice, which you might have expected at the same time as he was proposing to reduce the costs to doctors of malpracticing. Maybe this is because gross incompetence is a way of life for GeeDubya, taken for granted like the air he breathes.

Any comments he might have made about doing this to ensure continued access to doctors (didn’t read the whole speech) were made nonsense of by his plans to cut payments to Medicare doctors yet again, announced last month, or by the plan announced on the very same day as his malpractice speech to let states restrict the access of Medicare patients to emergency medical services.

But that isn’t the real addition of insult to injury. No, the real jaw dropping, you gotta be shitting me insult is the provision that got almost no attention: he wants any money plaintiffs receive from their own insurance companies to be deducted from awards. In other words, he wants to shift penalties awarded against doctors guilty of medical malpractice from the guilty doctors to the insurance companies of their innocent victims.

So the inspectors found some empty warheads in Iraq. I guess that means the warhawks will stop attacking the inspectors as incompetent, huh? I’ve heard conflicting opinions from Iraq and from the empty war-heads in charge of US foreign policy as to whether Iraq accounted for them, but nothing from the UN inspectors yet. Of course anything that the US says about the content of the Iraqi submission is automatically suspicious given the 8,000 pages the US decided to censor before handing it to anyone else. In further sloppy reporting, I haven’t heard what happened to the warheads: did the inspectors remove them for destruction, or what? Also, I take it warhead means the part of a rocket that doesn’t contain the engine and propellant, which makes it pretty much just an empty metal container. OK, they may be more sophisticated than that, but it would have been nice if one of the many fine news sources I patronize had looked into this. One quick and dirty guide to their sophistication or lack of it might be the price.

Divisive

I bought shoes today. I hate buying shoes. Fortunately, the shoe store was near a Krispy Kreme, and I don’t so much mind buying donuts.

North Korea’s website. Probably its only website.

It is now legal to have unmarried sex in Georgia. Plan your vacations accordingly. In the case involved, a 16-year old boy was ordered by the court to write an essay on why he shouldn’t have sex (in Georgia the age of consent is 16, although I guess only if you’re married; however, asking a 16-year old student of the Georgia education system to write an essay is just plain cruel). He wrote that it was none of their business. Unmarried sex is still illegal in 9 states and the District of Columbia.

News from the exciting world of cock fighting: in the Philippines, a fighting cock with razors attached accidentally kills, heh heh, his owner, after hitting him in the groin.

In his speech attacking affirmative action at the U of Michigan, Bush attacked “racial prejudice” at length. It’s just discrimination he doesn’t mind too much. Or at any rate, he’s willing for it to end, but only if it happens accidentally, as some commentators have said. Actually, though, what he really wants is for the issue of race to just go away. This is why he talks about prejudice, which doesn’t directly hurt anyone, and why he attacks affirmative action as “divisive,” as if rocking the boat is the worst thing he can accuse it of. Compare this to his preemptive claims that critics of his tax cuts for the rich were engaged in “class warfare.” Remember, it’s not racial and class inequality that are the problem, as far as he is concerned, but people bringing those inequalities to our attention.

In place of “quotas,” he approves the humbug plan adopted in California, and elsewhere, after affirmative action was banned in the university system, of taking the top, what is it, 5%?, of students at each high school, in effect replacing racial quotas with the divergent standards of schools in different neighborhoods. Elsewhere, he has criticized these differing standards as the “soft bigotry of low expectations,” but here he actually makes them the basis of his policy (or “basics of his policy,” as GeeDubya would say).

I was gonna say that “divisive” is what Trent Lott would mean when he used the words “stirring up the niggras,” but I decided that was too crude.

Secretary of War Rummy Rumsfeld again (see mine of 11/18/02) says that it doesn’t matter what the UN inspectors say about Iraq having WMDs (there, I’ve finally given in to the acronym). In fact, if they find no weapons, it just shows how sneaky the Iraqis are. On 11/18/02 I called this the heads I win tails you lose approach (in case you haven’t committed all my emails to memory)(and if not, why not?). Actually Rumsfeld has never been a big fan of having proof for the assumptions behind his policies (like GeeDubya with tax cuts). Bob Woodward reports that Rummy was calling for war with Iraq on 9/12/01, with, obviously, no proof of Iraqi involvement. To be fair, recent polls suggest that Americans think that some or most of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis, which is further evidence that in a democracy you get the government you deserve (or, to roughly quote H L Mencken, democracy is the theory that the people know what they want and deserve to get it--good and hard).

The Supreme Court decided 5-4 that it wasn’t double jeopardy to give a death sentence to someone in his second trial after the jury in his first trial found him guilty but deadlocked over the sentence, which in Pennsylvania law meant he automatically got a sentence of life rather than death. I guess it comes down to how you define “jeopardy.” Since he was found guilty the first time, and the second trial was on his own appeal, then yes a second *verdict* of guilty doesn’t count as double jeopardy. But the second trial certainly put him in jeopardy of a *sentence* of death for a second time, and the 5th Amendment reads that no one shall be “subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb”--the wording doesn’t confine jeopardy to the verdict. Either way, to create the possibility that challenging your conviction, as in this case, would put you in danger of the death penalty, is to pervert the course of justice. Even if it weren’t unconstitutional, it would be wrong and dangerous. In fact, I may be wrong, but I see nothing in the ruling that stops prosecutors who didn’t go for the death penalty in the first trial doing so for the second, purely as a way of punishing prisoners who dared challenge their conviction.

The NY Times didn’t like the $41 hamburger at all.

Bored as dead rats

In another display of arrogance, the Bush admin decided that Tom Ridge didn’t have to show up for a confirmation hearing chaired by Joe Lieberman. In another display of Democratic cravenness, Lieberman has caved in, and even given up his chairmanship a few days early, showing the leadership style that makes him totally unsuited for the office he announced he was running for the same day.

http://www.theonion.com/onion3901/bush_on_north_korea.html

You know that new car smell, the real one, not the one in the spray cans? It’s poisonous, can give you sick building syndrome. It takes 3 years for the level to drop into the safe range.

The biggest split over what to replace the World Trade Center with is between the sexes. Naturally, men want really tall, thrusting, throbbing towers at least the height of the original. Women are more concerned about safety. Actually, whose stupid idea was it to exempt the towers from fire department regulations anyway? Just don’t do that again, and we’ll keep the replacements below 50 stories.

The French minister of education (I’ll give the URL for the educationalists on the list), says what no other minister of education has ever said--school is boring, and by god it’s supposed to be boring. Why when he was in school, “80 per cent of us were as bored as dead rats”.

Turkmenistan’s loony leader, Sapamurad Niyazov, who renamed the months, has announced that later this week (in the month of Turkmenbashi) 32 people allegedly involved in a plot to assassinate him will go on trial. He also announced what their sentences will be.

In different parts of today’s NY Times, it is reported that Cal. Governor Gray Davis plans to cut 500,000 people from Medicaid, and that he will spend $220,000,000 on a spanking new death row for San Quentin, capacity of 1,000.

The world’s stupidest kidnappers released their victim, a former Goldman Sachs exec, after he promised to pay them $5 million. They actually got caught, just after that, because they ordered a pizza using his credit card.

Do you want fries with that?

I talked a while back the growing partisanship in Congress, in the sense of increasing intolerance of independence by rank & file Congresscritters. For more evidence of this, see this story

on changes in Congressional rules to tighten control by the leadership over the committees. This is important.

New Senate majority leader Bill “Kitty Killer” Frist says that critics of his civil rights record ignores “the fact I go to Africa once a year or twice a year to work with the African American community.” Um, I think those people are the African AFRICAN community.

CIA black propaganda alert: the sudden reports in several sources that Saddam Hussein might fake a coup, even fake an assassination using one of his doubles, before or during a US invasion. The hawks must be very worried about their war being taken away from them. Fake coup indeed.

In NY, a restaurant is offering a $41 hamburger. The meat is Japanese kobe beef, whatever that means. Evidently the cows are fed beer and get massages. Oh, and the restaurant is one of those that charge a service charge (20%), rather than have tipping. The Times reporter enjoyed it.

Damn, now I'm hungry again.

Drawing ridicule, scorn and anger

The government of Greenland has collapsed, after 37 days, in a controversy over a healer being brought in to drive evil spirits out of the government’s offices. The government resigned. So it worked.

Weapons of Mass Irritation: the US has been spamming Iraqi military and other leaders with emails suggesting that they not use their weapons against the US invasion, or face “personal consequences.” Also that if they help the US defeat Saddam, their credit will improve, penises grow larger, and watch women have sex with donkeys (I’m guessing. Actually, I’d like to see the exact text of these emails, if anyone runs across them).

In Britain, someone posted in the website Friends United that he’d become a great success since high school, selling cocaine. He’s now in prison.

I guess relating to Iraq, John Bolton, #3 man in the State Dept: “There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is only the international community, which can only be led by the only remaining superpower, which is the United States.”

When the ex-boyfriend of a Portland, Ore. cop was arrested for drugs, the cops went through her garbage cans and had her used tampons tested for drugs. (The story I read doesn’t say what the results were, but I think negative). She sued. A newspaper decided to go through the police chief’s garbage and list its contents in the paper. That would be one response. The other, I humbly submit, is for everyone in Portland to send their used tampons to the police or DA.

Ill. Governor George Ryan has pardoned or commuted all 150, 156, or 167 (how hard a fact was this for the newspapers to check, really?) people on death row. Here’s the response of the brother of one homicide victim: "How can one person have all of this authority and power?" As opposed to the power to decide that someone else’s life should be snuffed out. I can’t even imagine thinking that way, where a commutation is some awesome tyrannical use of absolute power, while signing a warrant of execution is nothing. Another relative of a victim (or maybe the same one) says "It's like we were murdered again." We? Ryan rightly says that his decision "will draw ridicule, scorn and anger."

The protean meaning of the phenomenon of the fart

The NY Times is not paying enough attention to prepositions. On its front page Wednesday, this headline: “US, in a Shift, Is Willing to Talk With North Korea About A-Arms.” Actually, though, that’s not the case. The US statement is that it has decided to speak to North Korea. Not with North Korea, but to North Korea. The distinction will not have eluded the North Koreans.

I haven’t noticed the FBI showing any embarrassment over last week’s fallacious warning about 5 Middle Easterners infiltrating the country from Canada. It’s not just that they went into full panic mode over a tip from one guy, but that they failed to notice that the pictures and names they had were of Pakistanis, not Arabs.

There are 54 Mexican nationals in US death rows. According to Mexico, which has gone to the World Court, all of them have been denied consular access.

Speaking of lack of evidence, there’s a cute piece in Salon by William Saletan comparing the press’s reporting of unsubstantiated claims that a clone has been born to reporting of unsubstantiated claims by the US that Iraq has weapons.

The Israeli Supreme Court allows the 2 Arab MPs to run for re-election. Which is fine as far as it goes, but the willingness of Jewish politicians to jettison the democratic rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel to have someone to vote for remains disturbing. The Court also allowed the candidacy of Meir Kahane’s racist successor. Meanwhile, the corruption scandal in Likud reaches Sharon. He went on tv today to denounce any suggestion that he would ever break election rules, only to have the broadcast ended in the middle by order of the election commission because it, well, broke election rules. The rules he had broken were that he illegally borrowed money after Likud was ordered to repay election contributions that had also broken the rules. Oh, and then he lied about the source of the borrowed money. Another infinite regression loop, just like the never-ending exchange of “reprisals.” Even his broadcast today wasn’t an explanation, but a series of accusations against his accusers and the Labor party--libel, perjury, etc.

WARNING: JOKE IN EXTREME POOR TASTE COMING UP. The UN reports that rebels in the Congo are eating pygmies. This is what happens when cannibals go on a diet.

Publisher’s blurb for On Farting: Bodily Wind in the Middle Ages by Valerie Allen and John Thompson: "The study of the fart in medieval culture participates in the widespread and productive contemporary study of the body, its practices and its hermeneutics. As a consequence of the cultural materialist interest in the quotidian, recent criticism has moved away from an abstracted conception of selfhood toward an appreciation of how the concrete daily regimens of bodily habits, generally taken for granted, shape the horizon of our cultural and individual consciousness. The fart, in its parodying of language and its logic of affinity, leads us ultimately to the problem of interpretation itself. ... A multifarious typology of the fart will permit a better understanding of the phenomenon's protean wealth of meaning.”

It takes years of grad school before you can write a boring book about farting.

Which leads us to another book, “Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis.” According to the review, ancient Hebrews used to swear oaths with their hands on their testicles, which is the origin of the word testify. My Oxford Concise says it’s the other way around, that the word testicles comes from the Latin testis (witness), suggesting that testicles are a witness to virility. There will be a short quiz on all this later.

Suicide kindergarten camps, he averred

In the middle of one of his rants, Netanyahu said the Palestinian gov should close “suicide kindergarten camps”. Say what?

Photo of Ariel Sharon peering through binoculars--whose lens cap is on.

The BBC reports that Britain has finally been proven still to be the force in the world it likes to think itself. All right, they didn’t put it in those terms, but for months you could see how dispirited Tony Blair was by the fact that there hasn’t been a single terrorist attack, even an abortive one, on Britain, despite his many warnings that Britain was a prime target. The BBC said that a raid on a home has uncovered a “deadly toxin.” Let the flood of jokes about British cuisine begin.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has decided that potential terrorist threats cannot be considered when licensing nuclear reactors, not because there is no threat, but because they can’t put a number to it. “We have no way to calculate the probability portion of the equation [risk = probability times consequences], except in such general terms as to be nearly meaningless.” Well, no, we don’t know the number, but I’m sure if you ask Tom Ridge, he’ll come up with a nice color for you. Jesus Christ, our entire foreign and military policy, the suspension of major civil rights and so forth are all predicated on risks expressed in such general terms as to be nearly meaningless.

Republicans have suddenly discovered that “double taxation” is immoral, at least when it’s in the form of dividends (of course it’s not double taxation for the many corporations that escape paying corporate income tax). The fact that they’d even say this in public suggests a total contempt for the intelligence of the American people (the thing nobody ever went broke underestimating, as the Bard of Baltimore averred). The sales tax is a double tax. Paying state as well as federal income taxes is a double tax. I could go on.

But if you’re going to be double taxed, at least you shouldn’t have to work hard to earn your money. Just received a box of things my mother taped off HBO for me, and I’ve been somewhat befuddled by the credits. Someone is employed on The Sopranos as a dialogue coach for James Gandolfini. First, imagine your job being to teach someone to talk like a New Jerseyan. Second, Gandolfini is a native of New Jersey. I was very disappointed by the fact that not once in the 4th season is someone described as a “motherless motherfuck.” Also, in a Robin Williams special, someone had responsibility for Mr. Williams’s hair and makeup. OK, any makeup was washed away in a flood of sweat within the first twelve seconds, so that part’s kind of pointless, but my god, his hair--that should be a team effort. I’d expect to see one person credited with responsibility just for the hair on his left arm above the elbow. The man is quite hairy, is the point I’m trying to make here.

Do you think “averred” is the most pompous word I’ve ever used? Do you think I made up for it with “motherless motherfuck”?

Is Oxford ready for Chancellor Billy Bob?

Another Republican, the current vice-chairman of the California party, running for the top job, has befouled his career by expressing the Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name, that of white Republicans for the Confederacy. Bush’s people refuse to comment, saying it’s a local matter. These are the people who keep telling Venezuela and the EU and everyone else how to handle their local matters.

I mentioned that Roy Jenkins died without mentioning that he was chancellor of Oxford. There is a move afoot to have Bill Clinton replace him.

I also mentioned that Israel banned Palestinian delegates to a conference in London. What’s interesting is how Israel took the opportunity to spit at the British gov, which it didn’t actually forewarn of the move. And when Jack Straw called about it, they published a transcript, which is a serious breach of diplomatic protocol.

The US continues to refuse to talk to North Korea, saying that that would be to reward blackmail. So the US has cut off food aid. Denying food to a starving nation can of course in no way be construed as blackmail.

Speaking of nuclear blackmail, during the Gulf War, Colin Powell was asked, and then ordered, to draw up contingency plans to use nuclear weapons against Iraq. Ordered by Defense Secretary Dick Cheney.

A hot tip on the Iraq war

Roy Jenkins, Britain’s home secretary and chancellor and nearly prime minister in the 1960s, has died, rather disconcertingly while I was in the middle of reading his biography of Churchill.

Britain was supposed to have a conference on Middle East peace next week, but Israel has banned the Palestinian delegates from traveling.

Cute story in the NY Times Sunday about a New Orleans prosecutor in a capital case who wears ties with nooses & the Grim Reaper on them.

Brits and gambling. Foreign sec Jack Straw says that the odds of war in Iraq are 60-40 against (the last figure on Slate’s Saddameter was 68% for). And Ladbrokes lowers the payoff for bets that Iain Duncan Smith won’t last out the year (as head of the Tory party, if you didn’t know, and if you didn’t, that’s just one reason he’s probably going) from 3:1 to evens. But if you’re planning a flutter, my handicapping is in favor of war and against IDS leaving that soon, simply because of lack of alternatives.

Britain is planning to ban replicas of guns: when fake guns are banned, only fake criminals will have fake guns. If there’s ever a ban on replicas of crime policies, Blair would be in trouble.

Still no word on exactly what the “hot pursuit” policy re American troops really is on the Afghan-Pakistani border.

Baby Jesus butt plugs

John Edwards announces he is running for president. This may be the last you ever hear from him. He says he wants to be a “champion for regular people.” So I guess none of us will be voting for him. Guardian headline: “Millionaire Lawyer Aims to be President for ‘Regular Folks’.”

See the 1/3/03 Doonesbury for a useful concept: “comfort arrests.”

The body of a murdered prostitute in Britain is identified through her breast and butt implants. You don’t want to know why fingerprints and dental records were no help.

Butt implants was a new concept to me. But see www.betterbuttocks.com.

www.furnitureporn.com

The US military claims it can pursue people from Afghanistan into Pakistan. Pakistan says like hell.

Didn’t the Bay Guardian’s “Offies” used to be funnier? Well, here’s a link anyway.

And 3 stories from it, below, so you don’t have to bother.

Oh, there’s also an article on dildos with religious themes, such as the one I couldn’t resist using in my subject line.

Excerpts from Offies:

And while we're at it, I'm not a crook, so let's stop all this impeachment crap

Recently released tapes from the Nixon archives provided even further insight into the former president's beliefs: After Nixon's ambassador to France got badly drunk on an airplane and began groping flight attendants, Nixon declared at a staff meeting, "Look, people get drunk. People chase girls. And the point is, it's a hell of a lot better to get drunk than take drugs. It's better to chase girls than boys. That's my position, and let's stop this crap."

Coming soon to Abercrombie and Fitch

The leader of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, set off a new fashion trend in that country with his trademark hat made out of the fur of aborted lamb fetuses.

And next, the happy cows will be promoting McDonald's

An ad campaign for Denny's featured Miss Piggy, the Muppet, hawking a sausage- and-bacon combo breakfast. "I think people understand that it's the Muppets," a Denny's spokesperson said. "If we had a real pig in here eating bacon, then there would be issues."

A diplomatic showdown

Israel bans another Arab MP and his party from the elections (a story yet to appear in either the NY Times or the WashPost, although everyone carried the court ruling that military reservists can’t resist illegal orders but must be good little Germans). Won’t stop them calling themselves a democracy, I imagine, although 20% of the population is now effectively disenfranchised. But I guess the Palestinians can always vote for the Zionist of their choice.

The US has finally snuck genetically modified crops into Europe in a rather odd place: its money. The euro is printed on cotton, which is imported from Turkey or the US. In the US, cotton is often GM, and no records are kept.

Speaking of funny money, the parents of a Vermont girl arrested for marijuana possession showed up with her $50,000 bail money, which the police promptly confiscated because it smelled like marijuana. The money came from their daughter’s friends.

Today was the annual release of British records under the 30 Years’ Rule. In 1972, the year of Bloody Sunday, the Heath gov considered repartitioning the province and expelling the Catholics. The 2001 census shows the Catholics are gaining fast. The census people refuse to take no religion for an answer. Even if you’re an atheist, they ask what your parents were and where you went to school so they can decide what religion you should be.

The Texas Supreme Court rules 8-0 that the state doesn’t have to pay for abortions in cases where the mother’s health is at risk. That’s eight to zero. The state is required to pay for all medically necessary procedures for men, of course.

This is a British story, or it might result in some very silly warning labels: A 12-year-old girl died after hitting her head during a pillow fight with her best friend. Jessica Smith made a playful lunge with the pillow but missed and banged her head on a bedstead. ....

Speaking of dead girls (because I always enjoy starting out the year on a light note), that Russian colonel, the only person in the military ever charged with one of the many, many atrocities committed in Chechnya, was acquitted for raping and strangling a teenage girl because he was crazy at the time. Well, drunk, anyway. The rape part wasn’t mentioned in court.

Shrub is twisting himself into humorous knots trying to describe why North Korea is not like Iraq. He again tries to claim that Iraq might have nukes, which it does not. He says, “I believe this is not a military showdown, this is a diplomatic showdown.” The word showdown is a sure sign that he was in Texas at the time; the military/diplomatic distinction, if it means anything, means that the American response in one case is military, in the other diplomatic, or in other words, his explanation for why he’s responding to the two situations differently is that it’s because he’s responding to them differently. So that clears that up. Come to think of it, I know what a military showdown is, but what the heck is a diplomatic showdown? Start back to back, walk ten paces, then turn around and exercise diplomacy? Dooooo not forsaaake me, o my daaarlin’....

Ask not what her country can do for Gwyneth Paltrow...

www.stopabductions.com for instructions on building a helmet to screen your thoughts from aliens. And it’s fashionable too.

As predicted, the Israeli Election Commission has barred one Palestinian MP (so far) from running for reelection, while allowing Jewish nationalist Baruch Marzel (successor to Meir Kahane) from a banned party to run.

Philippines prez Gloria Arroyo has received a message from God not to run for reelection.

WaPo on Reagan administration efforts to get close to Iraq by selling it weapons and components of its chemical warfare program. Same old stuff, maybe a bit more detail. I’m sure any day now the UN inspectors will kick in the door at Dow Chemicals and forcibly remove its scientists for questioning. Mark Russell said we know Saddam has weapons of mass destruction--we’ve got the receipts.

I can’t figure out if there is an actual policy towards North Korea. Rumsfeld threatened them with war, Powell threatened them with long boring negotiations. One article said that the Clinton admin assumed that the NK government was irrational while the Shrub admin assumes it’s a rational actor, or maybe it was the other way around, because I don’t see how either view is reflected in actual policy. Others think the Bushies aren’t worried about NK because its government is bound to collapse--just any day now--and the US will put pressure on its neighbors to put pressure on it to ensure that. Worked so well with Cuba. The argument that you don’t negotiate with people who continually go back on their word is a sound one, of course, except 1) the US is in no position to make it, both in general and because the North Koreans have some reason to argue that the US isn’t keeping its end of the 1994 deal, 2) principles are great and all, but if the Dear Leader would give up nuclear weapons in exchange for a blow job from Gwyneth Paltrow or whatever the hell he wants, maybe we should just put a big red bow on Ms. Paltrow and parachute her into Pyongyang in the interests of large numbers of people not being turned into charcoal. All the American talk about not giving them anything in exchange for bad behaviour is especially worrying because it seems designed to back the Northies into a corner: they must not only give in, but be shown to the world as giving in, to the might and majesty of the United States of America.

Under a law passed in Israel in May, and unreported in the American or British press until today (you read about it here on May 1st, but it really was a coincidence that I happened across it while looking for something else in Ha’aretz), the Knesset can bar members and parties that deny that Israel is a Jewish state. Currently, it is trying to expel all 3 Arab deputies and bar their party from next month’s elections. The party’s leader is being prosecuted (the Knesset stripped his parliamentary immunity, natch) for arranging to reunite elderly Palestinians with their families in Syria.

Speaking of horrible crimes, there’s been an incredible amount of condemnation of a weird-ass cult’s claim to have cloned a human. The pope, to name one, said that this act, which at worst created a new human life, was a sign of a “brutal mentality.” In other news, Israel shot dead an 11-year old yesterday, and a 9-year old the day before that, and not a fucking word was said about that.

Negative effect

Not that you’d know it, but there was a large-scale round-up of Muslims in this country last week. They were told to go in to INS offices to register, and many did not come out again, like those scams where the police call up wanted felons and tell them they’ve won a prize. This is presumably not something you’ll find in those propaganda films the State Dept is trying to show in Muslim countries. A high number of these round-ups were in southern California and the local Iranians were pissed off. (This is from a story in the LA Weekly). The Justice Dept flew in a rep to talk to the Iranian community, and to threaten them with the “negative effect” of protesting the mass arrests. “It makes other people think you don't want to be here. I think we need to look at what is the impact of open, glaring challenges to our system."

Also, Middle Easterners on student visas, including 2 at Kevin’s university, have been put in jail for carrying too few units.

Israel conducts a number of operations looking for “wanted Palestinians.” Can’t have wanted them that much, since they managed to kill a bunch of them (plus the usual innocent bystanders). Must be a Christmas thing: they bugged their parents for months for some Hamas Action Figures, get them, immediately break them, and now they’re playing with the boxes.

Sorry ‘bout that.

Israel is also announcing free-fire zones around Jewish settlements. Or to put it another way, they’ve just seized a lot more land.

The Israeli soldier who shot the 95-year old has actually been punished: 65 days in jail. Well, in a military prison, which I gather tend to be very cushy.

Iran has suspended stoning as a punishment.

One of the pleasures of the NY Times is its reviews trashing horrible movies. Read the review of Pinocchio.

http://www.playingsafely.co.uk/12stisofchristmas/12-STIs.html

Guardian columnist John O’Farrell asks if British troops, instead of being sent to war in Iraq in order to help GeeDubya get re-elected, couldn’t just be sent directly into marginal states to canvass for Republicans. “Instead of blowing up Baghdad, the RAF could just blow up thousands of red, white and blue balloons.”

The 5 Japanese kidnapped by North Korea have finally denounced the NK government.

No government can go about sucking blood of its own people

43% of new Congresscritters are millionaires. In 2000, it was 1/3.

Here’s something I didn’t know: in Alabama, January 20 is both the federal Martin Luther King holiday and the state Robert E. Lee holiday.

WaPo for US national security defends defending the torture of Al Qaida and Taliban suspects, including handing them over to Egyptian or Moroccan torturers--nothing I didn’t mention months ago, but it’s nice to see it in the Post. And the quotations are horrifying, so this is a must-read. The paper notes that sleep deprivation, one of our methods, is denounced in the annual State Dept reports as a method of torture when other countries do it.

There’s also a story in the Post about how in 1969 Nixon tried to give the Soviets an incentive to hurry North Vietnam along at the negotiating table by putting US nuclear forces on alert, essentially threatening them with a nuclear war, as part of his “mad bomber” strategy. I’m unclear why this is news, since I knew about it 20 years ago, I think from an essay by Daniel Ellsberg.

Speaking of mad bombers, no one seems to be making anything of it, but Rumsfeld threatened North Korea with war a couple of days ago. He said that the US can indeed conduct two wars at the same time, so Iraq won’t stop us taking them on too. Does anybody else think that threatening war--especially threatening possible nuclear powers with war--is becoming entirely too routine, so much so that this one didn’t even cause the tiniest of stirs?

Analyzing their poo

Chester Trent Lott in an AP interview: “A lot of people in Washington have been trying to nail me for a long time. When you're from Mississippi, when you're conservative and when you're a Christian, there are a lot of people that don't like that. But I fell into their trap and so I have only myself to blame.” Ah, so the whole 100th-birthday-party-for-Strom-Thurmond thing was actually a cunning Liberal trap, going back to 1902, to nail Trent Lott.

Lott spread the blame a bit: he also attributed his fall from grace to a plot against the great state of Mississippi and of course to God. “God has put this burden on me and I believe that he'll show me a way to turn this into a good.”

The Lott thing has finally made one news source, the New Republic, write about the racism of Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, as I have in the past on several occasions, but somehow the man rejected by the Senate for a district court judgeship under Reagan for his racist actions and words slipped past the media into the Senate in 1996 by the clever expedient of shortening his name to Jeff Sessions. And now he’s on the judiciary committee.

Lott has of course been replaced by Bill Frist. Am I the only person who imagines the R Senators singing “If I only had a heart doctor”? I’m telling you, the irony of this thing is ridiculous. Here’s an extremely disturbing comment on Frist’s qualifications by Lamar Alexander on today’s McNeil-Lehrer: Well, let me tell you a very short story to answer your question. Imagine ten years ago, a 40-year-old young physician having dinner with his family here in Nashville, gets an emergency telephone call, goes out to the airport, gets in his own plane, flies to Duke, to the medical center, cuts the heart and lungs out of a dying person, puts it in a plastic bag full of ice, puts it back in his plane, flies back to the Vanderbilt University heart transplant center, which he founded, and goes into an eight-hour surgery procedure to place that heart and lungs back into another dying person who then lives. Now, if you understand that, and a man who then gets back to his young family the next morning about 12 hours after he left, you understand about 75 or 80 percent of who Bill Frist is.”

And Rep. Cass Ballenger (R-Way Down South in the Land of Cotton), the guy who made the comments about Cynthia McKinney giving him segregationist feelings, has repainted his lawn jockey white.

Iraq invites the CIA to send agents--openly--into the country to check on arms. Where’s the fun in that?

The US has dismissed the offer as a “stunt.” No, juggling chainsaws is a stunt. GeeDubya trying to speak a coherent sentence is a stunt.

Iraq has also welcomed the first international group of voluntary human shields. Sadly, they do not include Sean Penn.

Speaking of omissions in the Iraqi arms dossier, the US cut 8,000 pages out before handing it on to the non-permanent members of the Security Council. The US did that, not anyone working for the UN.

The AP yesterday became the first media source I’ve seen actually to question the laughable claim by the US that Saddam intends a “scorched earth” policy, noting that no evidence for this assertion has been given. The article also says that US radio broadcasts into Iraq, currently trying to get soldiers to desert, says that when Iraqi POWs were returned after previous wars, Saddam ordered their ears be cut off. This is a lie.

Remember when the US accidentally bombed some Canadians in Afghanistan in April? It turns out that the pilots were on amphetamines. Why? Because the Air Force told them to. Evidently this is standard.

There is no room at the Bethlehem Inn. It has been commandeered by the Israeli Army. Another paper reports that every Palestinian living under constant curfew in Bethlehem has but one dream: a visa to the US. Talk about no room at the inn!

The Catholic Church in Boston demands that all sex abuse cases be dropped on First Amendment grounds. I really must go over the New Testament again.

Best headline of the week, about Kenya’s elections, in the Guardian: Après Moi, the Delusion.

More than Winona Ryder ever did

There’s a piece in the NY Times on how subtly Bush managed the removal of Trent Lott, without leaving any fingerprints. Unless you count that front-page story. Oh, or last week when Bush publicly called Lott’s remarks un-American, which was the moment any political commentator with half a brain knew that it was all up. Is there a way for me to suggest that Bush being able to reshape the leadership of another branch of government is a bad thing without actually getting Lott back? If so, sign me up.

To quote a disgraced British celebrity you’ve never heard of, At least I’ve paid for my slips, which is more than Winona Ryder ever did.

What I enjoy is that so many of the Republican Senators who wanted Lott gone disliked his sudden death-bed conversion to affirmative action and the King holiday. Lott was now too liberal on race for his colleagues.

The Daily Telegraph says that incidents in which US troops have been attacked in Kuwait have been covered up. Also, the Kuwaiti government has been cracking down on people who denounce the American presence there.

Bad news: the show Friends has been renewed. This is bad because it lessens the pressure on NBC to renew the West Wing.

The Post has a story on a Dallas suburb that has banned toy guns (if toy bans are banned, only toy criminals will have toy guns). And in Israel, the Orthodox owner of a toy-importing company removed all the pigs from a farmyard model.

A while ago I asked who was supposed to give asylum to those Iraqi scientists & their families the Bushies want abducted, since the UN can’t given anyone asylum. The Post says that the inspectors have been talking about this with the last country that should be seen to be involved in this, the US. And amazingly, the US is refusing to promise that it will offer asylum. Or rather, it won’t give it to anyone who says things the US doesn’t want to hear, like that Iraq has no weapons of MD, only those who follow the US line. Subtle, huh? The article also says that the US will give Blix a list of scientists they want interviewed: in other words, a shopping list of people Bush wants gift-wrapped and put under his tree.

Trent: don’t let the burning cross hit you in the ass on the way out

www.re-date.com will tell you how many seconds, minutes, etc you’ve been alive, how many people have born and died in that period, how far light would travel or your fingernails grow if you didn’t cut them.

At the UN, the US vetoes a condemnation of Israel for killing 3 UN workers. The US said the resolution was one-sided. No, it condemned everyone in the Middle East who has killed UN workers, which is a perfectly legitimate thing for the UN to do. The US is also against demanding that Israel comply with the Fourth Geneva Convention (i.e., stop targeting civilians).

Colin Powell has announced he won’t issue a Middle East peace plan because he doesn’t have one. No, actually he said he wouldn’t release it before Israeli elections, which suggests either 1) the US will tailor its plan, not to basic fairness, but to what flavor of fascists dominate the next government of one of the two sides, or 2) they want an election to occur without having basic facts before it.

American Samoa reverses its ban on Arabs. Samoa is semi-autonomous, but the ban was bound to be reversed when the US press finally noticed it, a mere 4 months after it was implemented (I didn’t know about it either).

A Guardian report on Ole Miss, where Trent cheer-led and certainly didn’t foster hatred, says it’s now 13% black, although his old frat sure isn’t. The Confederate battle flag has been removed from the University flag, but the marching band still plays Dixie--the black musicians routinely refuse to play along.

I’ve been meaning to mention something Lott said in one of those apologies. He said that he personally practiced affirmative action, that he had hired blacks on his staff. The thing is, his office has refused to release actual numbers, so what Lott evidently meant by affirmative action wasn’t that he hired blacks at or above their percentage of the population, but that he hired blacks AT ALL.

I still say the most frightening thing of the whole Lott affair was how the “liberal media” and politicians waited for permission from conservatives before reporting Lott’s remarks. A story in the Guardian notes that the story was brought to attention and kept alive by the bloggers.

Against the wishes of all 140 other nations in the WTO, the US blocked a deal for cheaper drugs to poor countries. Dick Cheney stepped in to overrule the US trade negotiator.

Every paper today has “leaks” from the US government that Saddam intends a “scorched earth” policy in event of war. None of the papers suggest that these attempts to put the blame in advance for power plants, water purification plants, food depots, etc., blowing up on Saddam rather than on the US would insult the intelligence even of a member of the Bush family. This really has to be the lamest disinformation exercise yet, but by god it works.

An op-ed piece in the Times points out that Bush has yet to issue a single pardon or commutation and says that this is bad for the notion of rehabilitation. The article does not mention the fine work Bush has done in placing so many felons--some of them issued with pardons by his father--in charge of American foreign policy. Indeed, asked about John Poindexter, Bush said that he “has served our nation very well.” Unfortunately, he didn’t serve any of his six-month prison sentence.

The Memory Hole website has been tracking the amazing disappearing website of the Total Information Awareness office. Its creepy logo has now vanished from the site, following its motto and the biographies of its officials.

Speaking of websites, TomPaine.com has offered $10,000 for the name of the Senator who put in that provision shielding Eli Lilly from lawsuits.

The US’s propaganda aimed at Muslims (see how well we treat them in the US? We allow them to drive taxis, so how can you think we’re anti-Islamic) have been banned from Lebanese tv on the grounds of being total shite. And, from the booklet being put out under this program in Indonesia, these fun facts to know and tell: number of mosques in California: 227; number in New Hampshire, Maine and South Dakota: one each. There is no mention of the four most famous American Muslims, Muhammed Ali, Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan or Mike Tyson.

From the Telegraph: A teacher who killed a pensioner after trawling the internet for information on death and torture was jailed for life yesterday. Two days before stabbing Dennis Cottrill, 71, who was out for a walk, Thomas Clark, 30, logged on to the Ask Jeeves website to ask: "What sentence would I get for stabbing somebody in an unprovoked attack?"

Brad Pitt creates a sense of inferiority among Asians

Joe Conason at Salon notes a deal between CSX, the railway company formerly headed by John Snow, the new Secretary of the Treasury, and the Carlyle Group, the evil Republican conglomerate I’ve talked about before, a deal that was threatened by the dock conflict until Bush ordered the dockers back to the jobs they’d been locked out of. Also, Snow got CSX to give him a new contract last year whereby he’d make a bundle if he left for...a government job.

Malaysia bans a series of Toyota ads from tv, saying that ads featuring non-Asians create a sense of inferiority among Asians. The ads star Brad Pitt.

A town in Switzerland, Meilen (pop. 11,500), tried to establish apartheid, banning asylum-seekers from certain parts of town, and not allowed to gather in groups in other parts. They had to back down. Did I mention the area is the German-speaking part of Switzerland?

And American Samoa banned Middle Easterners.

Medical break-through: a man’s liver is removed from his body, given radio-therapy, and then reimplanted, without the radiation endangering his other organs. Pretty cool.

Last time, I mentioned a scandal in the Likud party primaries, which like the Lott scandal raises the question, where the hell were the American newspapers? The Israel story is two weeks old, and nothing before tomorrow’s NY Times. This story fails to mention that one of the new Likud candidates is Sharon’s son. This is doing major damage to Likud’s reputation in advance of next month’s elections, but not enough damage. The next Knesset will therefore be full of criminals and their relatives, who bought their way in with cash and hookers. And in a separate scandal, the guy who assassinated Rabin says that he had been heard talking about the need for Rabin to be assassinated by the head of the religious-settler party Molodet.