"A plan known only to Providence." What does Rhode Island have to do with it?

So Stephen Hawking rolls into a strip club.... No, seriously. There’s a picture.

The US may not have admitted that its “ultimate objective” in sending troops to Iraq is to gain access to its oil, but the Polish foreign minister has (the words in quotes are his).

Bush comes out against slavery. He thinks it was a bad thing. Although he doesn’t actually apologize for it. Now remember how I complained about the affirmative action decision that the “diversity” argument was used as if you couldn’t just do it to redress injustices against minorities but had to claim that it benefitted white guys as well? How’s this for logic--Bush again: "the spirit of their captors was corrupted . . . small men took on the powers and airs of tyrants and masters. Years of unpunished brutality and bullying and rape produced a dullness and hardness of conscience. Christian men and women became blind to the clearest commands of their faith..." Then he goes on about the black people convincing whites to free them. "By a plan known only to Providence, the stolen sons and daughters of Africa helped to awaken the conscience of America. The very people traded into slavery helped set America free." So the real crime of slavery was that it hurt white people. (Most reports omitted the “Christian men and women” line; the NY Times carried it, and noted the intense religiosity of the speech, although it didn’t mention that Senegal is a mostly Muslim country.)

By the way, I was wrong about the residents of Gorée being confined to their homes during Bush’s visit. They were actually herded into a football field and kept there most of the day.

Maybe the drug tsar should be retitled the drug pope? He was at a Christian drug rehab clinic to “celebrate its miracles. ... Institutions that connect people to God are crucial to the many millions of people who are in recovery.” Hey if you want to connect them to God, give them their LSD back. Obviously the Bushies are preparing yet another cash giveaway to the God-botherers. (In the first line of this paragraph it would have bene more appropriate to say drug patriarch than drug pope, that being the title of the head of the Russian orthodox Church, thus extending the “tsar” theme, but I couldn’t be sure how many of you would have recognized the term)

WashPost headline: “U.S. to Appoint Council to Represent Iraqis.” Appoint. Represent. Don’t think so.

A very important continent

Gray Davis is spending a million bucks or so to get signatures on petitions against the recall. Such petitions have no legal value, or any other value really, and are presumably just intended to fog the issue. The LA Times has a story about migrant signature-collectors, who go from state to state in search of these paying gigs (it is illegal for other than registered voters to collect signatures, but the Republicans actively recruited in Washington state). Some simultaneously collect signatures for each side. Ah, citizen democracy at its finest.

The Israeli Cabinet agrees to release some prisoners. Islamic Jihad is threatening to end its week-old truce because none of its (or Hamas’s) people will be released. Or any the Israelis “think have blood on their hands.” That formulation refers to the fact that Israel doesn’t bother trying most of the people it detains. The 400 (some papers say 300) that will be released--very very slowly--would only amount to a fraction of the number detained without trial (every paper has its own figure for this one). I don’t know if releasees will be confined to them or will include people actually convicted of something, although I gather most will be women, children and sick people.

You’ll remember that Rumsfeld threatened Belgium that if it didn’t change its crimes against humanity law, he would pull NATO hq out of Brussels and otherwise punish them. They pointed out that they had already changed the law, stopping the proceedings against Bush and Tommy Franks, so why is Rumsfeld still not happy? Well, Rummy is actually acting on behalf of Ariel Sharon. The change in the law, allowing defendants to be tried only in their own countries, did in fact protect all Americans, but the people who filed charges against Sharon for the Sabra-Shatila massacres are Palestinian refugees, who wouldn’t be allowed into Israel to present their cases, so Belgium still has jurisdiction.

Only 9 current and former Senators made it to Strom Thurmond’s funeral. Trent Lott did not go. Suggested eulogy: If we had buried Strom in 1948 the country would not be in this mess.

I can’t figure out what the vote in Corsica turning down greater autonomy meant, but it sounds like the Corsicans weren’t too clear themselves.

African leaders are expected to complain to Bush about their cotton farmers being bankrupted by the heavy US subsidies of our cotton farmers. Oh sure, but when we brought them over to work in our cotton fields, they bitched and moaned about that too.

By the way, Bush will be visiting Nigeria, which he once described as “a very important continent.”

Italy’s highest court, which you know from this space deals exclusively with cases involving sex in automobiles, mothers-in-law, whether women wearing jeans can be raped, etc etc, rules that a pat on the ass constitutes sexual violence.

We’re getting closer to figuring out the precise limits of acceptable homophobia in this country. It’s somewhere between Rick Santorum and Michael Savage (who I never got around to watching during his brief run on MSNBC, not knowing the wit and subtlety of his rhetoric rose to this level: “Oh, you're one of the sodomites. You should only get AIDS and die, you pig. How's that? Why don't you see if you can sue me, you pig. You got nothing better than to put me down, you piece of garbage. You have got nothing to do today, go eat a sausage and choke on it. Get trichinosis.”).

In Britain, those limits have been clarified this week by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who pressured the newly appointed Bishop of Reading to resign. Seems the guy is in a homosexual relationship, celibate just as the Church of England and until recently the state of Texas demands, but the evangelicals, who have all the money, and the Anglican church in Nigeria, complained that he used to have sex and has not “repented.” The thing is, Rohan Williams, the bearded, happy-clappy Archbishop, knows better and not only gave in but defended the right of the bigots to be bigots.

The Simpsons, I mean Bushes, are going to Africa!

An ITN cameraman is killed in Iraq, the 17th journalist of the war and if I’m not very much mistaken the first not killed by the US.

Anglers in northern Italy are using live kittens as bait to catch catfish. If that isn’t icky enough for you, try to find footage of those Iranian siamese twins joined at the head.

Bush is going into the bush, the first president to visit Africa in his first term, and possibly the first sitting Republican president (what, Teddy Roosevelt didn’t go to shoot something?). He claims it’s about AIDS and humanitarianism (the extent of which can be seen in appointing an Eli Lilly executive to run the AIDS program, despite a compete lack of experience with AIDS or Africa). But of course it’s about oil deposits off the West African coast, which evidently the neo-Cons and pro-Israel types want. Oil has done nothing for the people of Nigeria or Angola except to increase corruption and pay for civil wars. Studies have said that discovering oil is one of the worst things that can happen to a Third World country.

Anyway, in Senegal, Bush will go to a slavery museum, where he will be shown the weights, neck rings and leg irons used on slaves being sent to America. No newspaper anywhere in the world will run this story next to a picture of prisoners being sent to Guantanamo. Which is why I should run a newspaper. When Nelson Mandela visited the museum, he asked to spend some time alone in the isolation room used for recalcitrant slaves. Speaking of which, the 400 residents of Gorée island will not be allowed out of their homes while Bush is around, because god forbid he should meet an actual native. Basically, he’s going to airports in 5 African countries, and the heads of state will come out to meet him and he’ll say he visited Africa.

I don’t think we’re ever going to get a credible explanation for why US troops in Iraq seized those 11 Turkish troops.

They don't expect God to have a Manchester accent

When I said that Wolfowitz names the people to be prosecuted by military tribunal, their juries, judges and the review board, I failed to mention that his insistence that defense lawyers have security clearances effectively means he appoints them too, or at least vetoes (and can remove them, or the judges, any time during the trial), and reserves the right to listen in on their conversations. The prisoners are also being threatened with the death penalty if they don’t plead guilty.

Incidentally, has there ever been an official explanation of the two prisoners beaten to death at Guantanamo?

Headline in the Observer: “Language Schools 'Were Front' for Lap-Dance Smuggling Ring” [in Ireland]. That’s what we need: an English-Lapdancing Dictionary.

This week Laos sentenced two European reporters to long prison terms, garnering absolutely no attention in the US, although they were reporting on the Hmong and other fighters we first incited into rebellion and then mostly abandoned in 1975. Evidently some of them are still fighting on and expecting rescue by the US any day now. Talk about not getting the message.

Checks and balances

Happy 27th anniversary of the Bicentennial.

Berlusconi denies that he ever apologized. Indeed, he feels that he is owed an apology.

Some idiot with piercings of her lips and studs was hit by lightning. Guess what acted as conductors? There is an organization for such people. I didn’t dare click on “Become a member.”

They’re finally moving towards those “military tribunals.” Here’s a quote from the Times:

"There are a lot of checks and balances in this system," one Pentagon spokesman told The Times. Asked what those checks and balances were, the official cited the review of the President's decision by Mr Wolfowitz.

Asked if there were any other checks and balances other than that, the official replied: "No, sir."

Wolfy not only names the people to be charged, but appoints their jury, and the panel that will review cases, and will make the final decision. So the person he is checking and balancing is himself. The “trials” will allow hearsay and coerced statements.

The BBC show Mastermind, compared to which Jeopardy takes the little bus to school, denies that it’s dumbing down, but sadly it is. One possible specialist category is The Simpsons. The Times has these suggested questions. If you’re very nice to me, I’ll send the answers some time. If you’re looking for a way to be nice to me, the Times says that Mastermind CD-ROMS are sold by the BBC. [Never mind, more expensive than I expected.]

I blame Roberto Benigni

India finally gets around to asking the US to extradite the former chairman of Union Carbide for the Bhopal disaster of 1984.

Berlusconi sort of apologized today (while also saying it was a premeditated provocation by his enemies), one of those sorry if you were offended because you’re a tight-assed German who can’t take a joke apologies. He also says that Italians make lots of Holocaust jokes because they know how to laugh at that kind of tragedy. But it turns out his “joke” was in far worse taste than we realized, thanks to lousy translation. He didn’t say Herr Schulz should play a commandant but a kapo, that is Jewish prisoners used to keep other prisoners in line. By the way, the film Berlusconi mentioned is already completed, and will be distributed by one of his companies. It wasn’t just an insult, it was an advertisement. One of his tv stations broadcast an excerpt from Hogan’s Heroes to show just how much Schulz resembled his fictional namesake (actually, not at all--by the way, Schulz’s father was victimized by the Nazis and he is a pacifist), and to keep up the sitcom theme, Britain’s Europe Minister Peter Hain suggested Berlusconi should follow Basil Fawlty’s advice and not mention the war.

A man in Oklahoma has been sentenced to life imprisonment for spitting at a cop.

My answer is bring them on

You know it’s a bad day when your desk chair tries to kill you in a suicide attack.

Bush on attacks on US troops in Iraq: “My answer is bring them on.” Traditionally, isn’t that phrase only used by people who will do the fighting themselves? Or is this some sort of subliminable reverse psychology thing? He also blames Al Qaida for the attacks, with no evidence whatsoever.

I’ve lost track. Have we reached the point where more US soldiers have been killed after the war in Iraq was declared over than during the war?

A German is fined after admitting to crashing his car into a road sign while having sex with a hitchhiker at 60 mph. The fine is for leaving the scene, and to replace the sign. It turns out that having sex while driving isn’t actually illegal in Germany. Plan your vacations accordingly.

Robert Mugabe calls Colin Powell an Uncle Tom. And your point is? Last week Powell promised massive aid to Zimbabwe if Mugabe was overthrown. How that’s different from putting a price on his head, I’m not exactly sure.

Darrell Issa, the guy funding the Davis recall, continues to implode as two old gun charges against him come out. Also, when a judge awarded him control of a company that had defaulted on a debt to him, he arrived, the story goes, with a gun that he showed the company’s director as he fired him. He sort of denies this, saying, “I don't think I ever pulled a gun on anyone in my life.” Right. Once again, Davis has found the one Republican he can beat.

I’ve talked about the secretive Carlyle Group and its Republican connections. Its managing director, who evidently didn’t realize he was being recorded, made some hilarious remarks about a drone he was asked to put on the board and fired 3 years later, one George Walker Bush. Read this, it’s hilarious.

One reason Berlusconi got his immunity law was so that his presidency of the EU wouldn’t be blighted. Unless of course he opened his big mouth and suggested, not one full day into that presidency, that a German MEP would be perfect to play a Nazi concentration camp commander in a film. The MEP’s name is Schulz, yet. Berlusconi has refused to apologize. It should be noted that members of his governing coalition want ships carrying immigrants to have cannons fired at them. Some people have noted that the minimum standards of democracy that new applicants to the EU like Poland have to meet are no longer met by Italy.

Israel has pulled out of Bethlehem, which is still surrounded on all sides. Remember how I said Israel would make no such move without doing something nasty at the same time that wouldn’t get nearly as much publicity? In this case, they confiscated a bunch of land and plan demolition of Palestinian houses there, both acts not allowed under the “road map.”

Go to Google. Type into the search window “weapons of mass destruction,” but without using quote marks. Click on “I’m feeling lucky.” Do it now.

Imposing our will

So that’s where those pesky WMDs are.

Someone explain to me the meaning of the lines coming off Gray Davis’s hands in this pro-recall website. The site makes this astonishing assertion as a reason Davis should be recalled: “When companies go bankrupt, the CEO takes the blame.” In what universe?

Recall funder Darrell Issa is complaining that Davis’s people alerted the media to his numerous brushes with the law (auto thefts, a mysterious fire at his company, etc.).

Speaking of bankrupt, California now is. Community colleges look likely to cancel their summer session, cops in South Central, excuse me, South LA, are being laid off, but somehow I’ll bet the state will still have to pony up the $30 million for the recall election. The London Times notes that Schwarzenegger has been giving scripted jokes with all the finesse of a reversing garbage truck. Rise of the Machines, indeed.

Next week Bush goes to South Africa and becomes the first head of state to do so and not request a meeting with Nelson Mandela.

The US arrests an Iraqi governor, installed by the, um, US. Kidnapping, assault, extortion, being a Sunni but claiming to be a Shiite, that kind of thing.

A new law in Montana provides a free college education to former inmates cleared by DNA testing. Which is something, since most exonerated inmates, no matter how many years of imprisonment they have suffered, don’t even get the services available to normal released prisoners.

The Israeli army has pulled out of Gaza, and returning expelled residents find that the Israelis have been busy little beavers, destroying any number of homes, businesses and citrus trees that competed with the Israeli citrus industry. The Israelis claim that this, like the occupation, was to stop the devastating Hamas rocket attacks, in which 2,000 rockets were launched at Israel, killing literally nones of people.

In a breakthrough that will make pro-lifers’ heads explode, scientists have found a way to grow ovarian tissue from aborted fetuses. The reason you’d want this is for IVF; there’s plenty of donated sperm, but donor eggs aren’t as much fun to make available.

Paul Bremer on the establishment of Athenian democracy in Iraq: “We are going to fight them and impose our will on them and we will capture or... kill them until we have imposed law and order on this country. ..."We dominate the scene and we will continue to impose our will on this country.”

Empire Magazine has named the 10 worst film accents of all time:

1 Sean Connery The Untouchables (1987)
2 Dick Van Dyke Mary Poppins (1964)
3 Brad Pitt Seven Years in Tibet (1997)
4 Charlton Heston Touch of Evil (1958)
5 Heather Graham From Hell (2001)
6 Keanu Reeves Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)
7 Julia Roberts Mary Reilly (1996)
8 Laurence Olivier The Jazz Singer (1980)
9 Pete Postlethwaite The Usual Suspects (1995)
10 Meryl Streep Out of Africa (1985)

If you have to go through this

The Republicans, or Bill Frist at least, come out in favor of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriages. Evidently this thing has been around for a while and is being considered by a House sub-committee without my ever having heard of it. Actually it goes rather beyond that, since I read the draft as possibly banning anything that recognizes the existence of non-marital relationships--health benefits for domestic partners, statutory visitation rights at hospitals, etc etc. This is the draft: "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any state under state or federal law shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups."

A first in Scotland: a mother and daughter jointly convicted for murder, of a man who made offensive remarks at a party (I can’t find out what remarks). The mother’s sister was also a murderer, in a different case, and committed suicide in prison two years ago. Here’s the good bit: the daughter, 16 at the time of the crime, 17 now, said “I am doing no more murders if you have to go through this. I should have learnt from my Auntie Frances, she did eight years for murder.”

There is a worry (in Britain at least) about possible declining numbers of insects, as well as birds. To measure this scientifically, someone has invented the splatometer, which is attached to a bit of a car windshield.

Prince Charles tries to deduct his polo expenses from his taxes.

Hamas starts a cease-fire and Israel starts pulling out of Gaza. The Telegraph has a good phrase for this (which they apply only to the first, but what the hell): “tactical morality.” The Israeli foreign minister says the ceasefire is a “ticking bomb” designed to “maintain the infrastructure of terror.” Israeli officials sure do claim to hear a lot of ticking lately, don’t they? I think it’s a guilty-conscience, Tell-Tale Heart kind of thing.

Click here for a list of the 43 countries that have signed agreements with the US mutually exempting each other’s war criminals from extradition to the International Court. Includes Afghanistan, Cambodia, East Timor, El Salvador, India, Nicaragua...

Roy Hattersley in the Guardian, writing about the pre-war claims about Iraq, applies to Blair an old line about Gladstone that could easily be applied to Bush, that not only is he hiding a card up his sleeve, but behaving as if God put it there.

Another Guardian columnist notes that Britain (and I think the US) complained last week about the house arrest in Burma of Aung San Suu Kyi, while Tariq Aziz and a bunch of other Iraqi leaders are being held incommunicado by the US.

Yoga for dogs, poo on stilts, deaf waiters on purpose, puttanopoly

It’s not just the British government at war with the BBC, now it’s the Israeli. In future it will refuse all interviews, and use visas to force the frequent rotation of BBC employees in the country, and not allow them through military road blocks, or issue them press cards.

New trend in NY: yoga for dogs.

An Australian group, the Revolutionary Council for the Removal of Bad Art in Public Places, has given a three-month ultimatum for public art such as one in Sydney nicknamed “Poo on Stilts” (sadly, no pictures in any of the news stories, and the only reference to poo on stilts on the internet is as an answer to the “joke” what’s brown and knocks on your window.)

Follow-up: the guardian that Florida insisted on appointing for that severely retarded woman has decided that she will be used as an incubator after all. No word on the identity of her rapist.

A gay, Democratic candidate for NJ state senate once entered a prettiest penis contest. Won, too.

A while back I linked to a site that talked about what the hell Bush was doing on 9/11. If you want to see the actual footage, starting from when Shrub was told of the attack on the 2nd tower, five long minutes of kids reading in unison (I haven’t downloaded the whole thing myself, but for crappier connections, there’s a version which is a snapshot every 5 seconds).

There’s a line in the majority opinion in the affirmative action case I missed the first time: “In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity.” Setting aside the word choice “visibly” in a case about race, let’s look at the irony, because the last time the Supreme Court was so concerned about leaders having legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it was refusing to allow a proper vote-count in Florida.

The Independent on Sunday interviews the US ambassador who investigated and discredited the report about Iraq looking to buy uranium from Niger, and how it was no secret. American officials still haven’t been questioned about this by Congress or the press or anyone. Some officials in the US & British governments are still claiming that they had other evidence, but by coincidence the only one they have every showed the public was a cheap forgery a 12-year old could have discredited with Google. Well, as one official said, “What I told the public came from very reliable sources. The full picture will only emerge when I write my book.” Oh, wait, that official was the Iraqi information minister Comical Ali.

A fundraising letter sent by Sen. George Allen (whoever that is) as head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee invokes Satan herself: "If Republicans don't take immediate steps to counter her, Senator Hillary Clinton will continue to rise unimpeded to the very pinnacle of power in Washington and we will see the dawning of a new, more liberal Clinton era." Evidently they expect her to take over as party leader after the R’s defeat Tom Daschle next year. Their website, NRSC.org, has a Stop Hillary Now button, and boasts “Hillary e-mail alerts.” I’ve signed up my cat (who just fell off the file cabinet).

I couldn’t make this up: a café on the Left Bank in Paris has only deaf waiters. There are leaflets explaining that yelling at them doesn’t help and giving the sign language for the various menu items. There are lights to request service, or, the leaflet suggests, "You can wave your hand and go ‘hou hou’ in the direction of the server; tap him on the arm to attract his attention; tap your foot and make vibrations; tell your neighbour to pass it on to his neighbour until the message reaches the deaf person; or throw a little object.”

A Sunday NY Times editorial comments on the problems of using Iraqis to run Iraq. I just want to say that if the US tries to administer Iraq without Iraqis I will accuse them of racism and colonialism; if they put exiles in charge I will accuse them of setting up a puppet government; and if they use Baathists, or worse, Iraqi military officers as they are now, I will fault them as well. No, they can’t win with me. Indeed they cannot win. They have placed themselves in a no-win situation. I am not being hypocritical because whatever they do, it will be wrong. A good commentary (much more sophisticated than the Times’s) on this is called “No Country Can Democratise Another.” A sentence that I liked gives the theme: “We Fed-exed the Afghanis the Bill of Rights rather than seeing the need for democracy to develop that accommodates the local history and culture.”


The US will finally return those Syrian border guards it shot and then held hostage, or whatever the hell they were doing. And I mentioned 5 Malawians spirited out of the country: there have bene major protest riots. We just pissed off another country, and nobody here even noticed.

A piece in the NY Times magazine on Guantanamo says that the concentration camp boasts just one video, the Tom Hanks movie Castaway. Another tidbit: the sign at the entrance says "Honor Bound to Defend Freedom". Better than Arbeit Macht Frei, I guess. The author finds the use of the word freedom ironic, but I find the implication that freedom is to be defended not for its intrinsic value but because of one’s personal “honor” to be even more so.

A great chicken, a friendly chicken, a chicken that is ready for a relationship

The Blair government is now in a war with the BBC, which despite being state-owned, has shown more backbone than America’s private media (have I mentioned that Meet the Press solicited and received highly slanted “facts” from the Treasury Dept that it used when interrogating Howard Dean?) in going after government lying about Iraq’s military capabilities. It’s been firing off letters to the Beeb, and issuing them publicly, demanding retractions and the name of its source, and, astonishingly, giving them a deadline--of midnight, yet--to respond. The Beeb told them to fuck themselves. Oh, and at a press conference with Putin, Blair answered questions from everyone except the BBC.

Ha’aretz headline: “Israel Wants US Guarantee that Palestinian Authority Will Dismantle Terror Groups.” Well, gee, how about if they say that they’ll dismantle any unauthorized terror groups, and then let them go ahead, just as long as they don’t “celebrate.”

The Bush admin has called for the overthrow of two African governments this week (Liberia, Zimbabwe).

The US birthrate is at its lowest ever.

And this won’t help: the Supreme Court legalizes sodomy in Texas. Plan your vacations accordingly. Best headline reporting this: “Court to Texas: Butt Out.”

Other states which had anti-sodomy laws: Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia.

Scalia says this is the start of the slippery slope to gay marriage (but only if you use the proper lubricant). And he makes this remarkable statement: “Today's opinion is the product of a Court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct.” So-called? He also talks about “the law professions’s anti-anti-homosexual culture.” He hilariously argues that a majority can outlaw homosexuality, that’s democracy not discrimination (not that he shares those sentiments, no don’t get him wrong). And hell, we have a history of it; he cites 4 executions for sodomy in colonial times as justification for Texas’s law.

The majority said that Texas’s law violated the “liberty of the person both in its spatial and more transcendent dimensions.” That’s a mighty fancy way of describing one man putting his penis in another man’s.... Kennedy wrote that “there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter.” I think you can write your own joke in response to that one without any help from me. He said that the men had engaged in “sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle.” “Not common enough,” you can hear some men saying. (Lifestyle? Scalia talked about culture wars, Kennedy about lifestyle; they both meant fucking). Actually, reading the decision,
I find that the majority were very specifically trying to legalize not homosexual sex, but homosexuality, the right to form personal relationships of one’s choosing: “When sexuality finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring.” This is welcome, but puzzling, since they didn’t strike down the Texas law on the equal-protection grounds that it discriminated against gay sodomy(except for O’Connor), as did 3 other states; the rest banned it for heterosexuals as well, and those laws were struck down too. Rather, it ruled on the basis of the “right to liberty under the Due Process Clause,” whatever that means. In other words, 5 Supes made one ruling, but Kennedy wrote his argument as if they’d made a different one. O’Connor is clearly embarrassed at having voted the wrong way in 1986 and actively lies about that ruling, which this one overturned, saying that it was never about legislating moral disapproval--which it patently was. At any rate, the Court came to a better, wider ruling than I expected, including saying that you can’t legislate moral disapproval, but their logic sucked.

It is truly dead-old-farts week. Dennis Thatcher (Maggie’s husband), Lester Maddox and Strom Thurmond. Probably the sodomy thing that killed them.

Holistic

The Supreme Court has done a nice job of fuzzying up the question of affirmative action. The collective result of the two decisions is a don’t ask, don’t tell policy. A point system is out, but race (or “diversity” as the Court insists, to portray affirmative action as benefitting all of society, which it does, but heaven forfend that just assisting historically discriminated-against minorities should be considered worthwhile all by itself, no, we have to insist that everyone gains, even while we’re making decisions about distributing a scarce resource, which is a process which will always benefit some people at the expense of others) may be considered in an “individualized, holistic review.” I’m from California, so I know that anything with the word “holistic” in it somewhere is going to be bullshit, like a “nutritionist” who swings a pendulum over you to discover whether you can eat peaches. A point system may be mechanical, but at least there’s transparency. Now, Michigan gave points not only for race (too many points, in my opinion) but also for children of alumni. In the old days, such applicants were given an individualized, holistic review, or, as they would have called it, the old boys’ network. Yeah, by all means let’s go back to that, only everyone who gets admitted gets it by a wink and a nod and an unaccountable back-room process.

The Supreme Court votes 6-3 to uphold requiring libraries to use internet filters.

New Zealand legalizes prostitution. Plan your vacations accordingly.

The CIA spirits five legal residents of Malawi out of the country, possibly with the connivance of the government, but in defiance of a high court ruling that they be either charged or released.

Showing our keen understanding of Islamic culture, we planned to give the Iraqi army a new name whose acronym meant fuck in Arabic (although even the Brits have their problems; the killing of 6 soldiers yesterday was a response to searches of women’s underwear drawers). Incidentally, the US has changed its policy and will now pay Iraqi soldiers their salaries. And employ them. To clean up minefields.

Speaking of which, the US is trying to weaken a proposed UN convention that would impose a legal requirement to clean up cluster bombs at the end of a war.

In Germany, a woman stabs her husband to death in a fight over what color to paint their apartment walls. The news story does not specify which colors each one wanted, so it’s hard to judge whether her reaction was appropriate.

The top 400 taxpayers in the US in 1992 had gross incomes totaling $19 billion. In 2000, $70 billion. Their income tax fell from 26.4% to 22.3%. Their share of total US income doubled from 0.52% to 1.09%.

Willfully tampering with their bodies to avoid military duty

Another poll in which 1/4 say that Iraq used chemical weapons against US troops. What you never see in these things is how that correlates with people who approve of Bush’s job performance. How ignorant do you have to be before Bush looks good?

The same poll says the American people would back Bush if he went to war with Iran, claiming it was to stop them acquiring nukeyular weapons. Happy Orwell centenary!

The DOD has been lobbying towns to turn July 4 into a pro-Iraq War event. They are calling it Operation Tribute to Freedom. I can remember when July 4 was called Independence Day and it was about some colonies leaving an empire, not about those colonies, all growed up, destroying the independence of another country.

Good “This Modern World” cartoon.

South Koreans can get out of the military draft if they have large tattoos, which would be offensive to the other soldiers in a Confucian society. 170 have been arrested for "willfully tampering with their bodies to avoid military duty".

After the speech by Bush claiming that the EU’s rejection of GM foods was starving poor Africans, the EU points out that it provides seven times as much aid to Africa as the US does.

So there’s one of those websites that denies there was a Holocaust and makes gas chamber and anti-Semitic jokes, with the twist that this one is in Israel. In Russian. In other words, some Russians got to settle in Israel by pretending to be Jews, and when they took off their yamukas, turned out to be skinheads.

Nanotechnology applied to a problem worthy of the most advanced technology on the planet: smelly socks.

The Nuremberg “Peace in our time” medal for conspicuous diplomatic cowardice this week goes to...everyone! For the British giving Putin a royal reception unseen since 1874 without mentioning Chechnya; for Bush for greeting Pakistani dictator Musharaf with an aid package of £1.8 billion without mentioning civil rights, democracy, or the new Taliban-knockoff government in the North West Frontier Province (remember when Bush was so proud about “freeing” the women of Afghanistan?); France for doing some sort of deal with Iran that involves arresting Iranian dissident exiles in Paris; India for recognizing China’s suzerainty over Tibet.

A gay canon

Ha’aretz reports that Ariel Sharon told his cabinet that Israel will continue building settlements but “should not celebrate the construction, should just build.” Settlers are putting up more of those “outposts” faster than they’re being taken down.

WashPost headline: “Bishops Urged to Reach Out to Victims.” Isn’t that what got them in trouble in the first place?

The Russian government has shut the last independent tv channel (and just 5 months before the next elections, too). Remember glasnost? And the Duma passed a censorship law, which got rather more attention because it’s so stupid, but should probably be ignored because 1) nothing the Duma passes is to be taken seriously, 2) Putin will do whatever he wants, no matter what the Duma has decided, 3) ownership matters more than law, as we know from the media wars in the US.

Which reminds me. Michael Powell’s new standards allow for more monopolistic ownership than we realized, because viewers of UHF stations only count as ½ in deciding how much of the market one company owns.

Bush’s latest statement on Iraqi weapons is not that they will be found but that the “true extent” of Saddam’s weapons program will be discovered. He adds that "all who know the dictator's history agree" that he had previously possessed and used banned weapons. Sure, in the 1980s! At the very time that Shrub himself possessed and used Alcohol of Mass Quantities.

USAID has been attempting to turn NGOs into GOs. NGOs awarded humanitarian contracts for Iraq were ordered not to speak to the media, and the head of USAID has threatened others for not telling Iraqis and Afghans receiving food and medicine that this was the largesse of George W. Bush and that they had better make it clear that they are “an arm of the US government.” The American Enterprise Institute and the Federalist Society have set up a McCarthyite “NGO Watch” in order to monitor any NGO that dares speak against Bush policies or for international treaties.

And something I missed, last month the US trade rep said that in future the US will only do trade agreements with countries that follow our line on foreign policy & security issues.

A good piece in USA Today (!) on how stupid decisions rather than the economy are responsible for the bad fiscal conditions of states (especially Calif.). Although it also suggests that those were precisely the stupid decisions (more spending, no tax increases) that polls say the voters want. I blame the failure to make the case for progressivity in taxation, but that’s just me.

A Slate article asks the question, Does it matter if we know whether Bush is lying or is just stupid.

And I have a new “tell” for when Bush is going to lie about his rationale for something, as demonstrated in something he said today: "For the sake of a continent threatened by famine, I urge the European governments to end their opposition to biotechnology.” (the continent is Africa). The tell is “for the sake of.” Remember all those Iraqwar statements by Bush beginning “For the sake of peace...”?

Two consecutive stories in the breaking news section of the London Times: “Archbishop Bids to Calm Gay Clergy Row”; “MPs Urge Ban on Smacking”. They’re not related, but wouldn’t it be fun if they were? The gay bishop in question is referred to in one headline as a “gay canon,” which I assume is his nickname.

Oh, and here’s one I hadn’t noticed, in the main British news section: “Sex Obsession Must Stop, Says Archbishop.”

The US accidentally invaded Syria yesterday.

History lesson

Must-have terrorism alert accessories.

Israel has killed another “top” Hamas leader. There used to be a joke about every Israeli being a general. Hamas personnel have all been upgraded to “ticking timebombs”--haven’t they seen a movie lately? Timebombs are all digital now.

Reuters says US troops are playing Ride of the Valkyries during their raids. Of course they are. Bush today accused Iraqis of trying to kill and intimidate American soldiers. Aw, are the poor babies feeling intimidated?

A zoo in China has ended one of its attractions, where it rented out rifles to visitors to shoot some of the animals. Those PETA spoil sports!

A month ago, I passed on a story about a Croatian man who was the only survivor, besides the driver, of a bus that plunged into a river, who in his life survived a train plunging into a river, and being sucked out of a plane that then crashed while he landed on a haystack. Evidently there’s more: he jumped out of a car going into a ravine, and two other cars he was in exploded (Yugos, I’m guessing). He just won $1 million in the Croatian national lottery.

I keep hearing Americans say that Iran has oil so it doesn’t need nuclear plants. At the same time, oil is being pumped out of neighboring Iraq, but there is still no electricity as temperatures reach 115 (Paul Bremer says there is now 20 hours of electricity a day in Baghdad. He lies.). The Americans have been unable to get anything working because they’re unwilling to employ actual Iraqis. Bremer and the like would score a lot more points locally if they’d sweat a little when they went on tv; Iraqis are really beginning to get pissed at the air-conditioner gap.

With all the discussion--finally--about the changing rationales for the conquest of Iraq (the War of the Bushes, I’ve started to call it, which is a play on War of the Roses, in case you didn’t catch it), I’ve been meaning to talk about other wars. And since today’s top story, judging by the front pages of the NYT & the Chronicle, is the Harry Potter book, I think I will.

For example, Grenada. This was an invasion that Reagan had been wanting to do for a couple of years. Grenada was the first English-speaking socialist country, and Reagan had Cold War blinkers on. But there were no buyers. He went on tv once or twice and displayed ominous spy satellite photos of the runway they were building, which could land a MIG, Reagan said, or tourist planes larger than four-seaters, the Grenadans said. A coup gave Reagan his opportunity, but it was only some time in that the war was given its rationale, the “rescue” of those poor American med students. I was proud of myself for having caught on to it about twelve hours before it became obvious that the rationale had been switched.

Panama had something to do with wives of American soldiers being molested, I believe.

The first War of the Bushes, Iraq ‘91, took weeks and weeks before it became about WMDs. Rescuing poor Kuwait wasn’t very appealing to Americans, especially as all the rich Kuwaitis urging the war were waiting it out in the south of France, and Kuwait wasn’t exactly an Athenian democracy. The war to make the world safe for feudalism, I called it. So that didn’t work. James Baker said the war would be for “jobs, jobs, jobs,” which didn’t look good at all. Some fake atrocity stories were spread around, but most of them, including the babies-ripped-from-incubators story, were already debunked before the carpet bombing began. Finally, after many focus groups, they started claiming that Iraq was developing nukes. I don’t remember exactly how Bush the Elder climbed down from that one when he failed to go after those weapons.

In those wars, it was at least one rationale at a time, serially as each one failed to catch on. Now they just throw a dozen out at once, half of them made up out of nothing, some aimed at different demographics (remember how we invaded Afghanistan to save the women from Taliban oppression?), and see what sticks.

I could go on along these lines about World War I and the Spanish American War, but I won’t. Maybe we should all tattoo this sort of thing somewhere on our persons like the guy in “Memento,” so we’ll actually remember it for the next war.

Lifting and spreading

On Meet the Press Sunday, Wesley Clark says that the Bush administration, starting on 9/11/01, tried to implicate Saddam, and that he personally was called up that day by some Bushie and asked to claim that connection on CNN. He asked for proof, there was none.

The conservative government in Spain has decided to make religion compulsory in schools. In public schools, religion is taught by Catholic priests or teachers appointed by the Church.

A pretty good piece in the Post on the intensive lobbying by Israel and the Jewish lobby in the US after Bush dared to issue a rather mild (toothless was the word I seem to remember Haaretz using) criticism of Israel’s latest assassination attempts, and how Bush was, essentially, tamed. What the article fails to mention is that Bush’s “road map” is predicated on the US being the sole judge of whether both sides are following the map, and Bush has just shown for the umpteenth time that the US isn’t up to the task of being even-handed.

The Catholic Church sure did get Frank Keating off that commission on church child abuse darned fast after he compared the church’s coverup tactics to those of the Mafia, didn’t they? Imagine if they’d moved even a thousandth as quickly in dealing with the priests, huh? Good priorities.

An op-ed piece in the Post on censorship in the Chinese media--which seems to be growing--is good as far as it goes, but let’s not get too superior, since the US army demanded the tape shot by a BBC tv crew at Guantanamo after prisoners shouted to them. This was done in the interests of not exploiting the prisoners, of course. And that little act of censorship didn’t make it into the American press at all. Like the Wesley Clark story. Who needs censorship?

I’m in a crabby mood, so it’s time to play Mystery Science Theater 3000 with a Bush fund-raising speech the RNC emailed to my cat. With comments:

Excerpts from President Bush's Remarks to
Supporters at the Bush-Cheney '04 Reception
June 17, 2003

"I want to thank you for your help tonight. I want to thank you for what you're going to do, as well. I want to thank you for helping to invigorate the grass-roots all across this country. I want to thank you for the phone calls you'll make, for the signs you'll put up in the yard, and for helping spread the positive message of this administration."

They just paid I believe $3,000 to be there (and were fed hot dogs and hamburgers), let’s not pretend they’re “just folks.” The people who attend a Bush fund-raiser do not put signs in their yard, they have Consuela put signs in their yard.

"The political season will come in its own time. Right now, this administration is focused on the people's business.”

Well not right now. Right now, this administration is focused on raising several million smackeroos so it can start running ads about Howard Dean’s kid being arrested.

"I came to this office to solve problems, not to pass them on to other Presidents and other generations.”

Except for that big honking deficit.

"In these challenging times, the world has seen America's resolve and courage. And I have been privileged to see the compassion and the character of the American people. All the tests of the last two-and-a-half years have come to the right nation.”

Actually I paid someone else to take those tests, just like I did at Yale.

“We're a strong country and we will use that strength to defend the peace."

Am I alone in thinking that Bush doesn’t know what the word “peace” means?

"We're an optimistic country. We're confident in ourselves and we're confident in ideals bigger than ourselves. We seek to lift whole nations by spreading freedom. And at home, we seek to lift up lives by spreading opportunity to every corner, to every person of this great country."

I was trying to think of a joke for this. What else involves lifting and spreading, I asked. Anal sodomy, I answered, and then was too grossed out to go on. I may have lived in the Bay Area too long.

"This is the work that history has set before us. We welcome it, and we know that for our country better days lie ahead."

Any day after you leave office, for example.

Have a dream

The Dept of Homeland Security’s inspector general says that it was perfectly appropriate under the agency’s guidelines to look for the Texas legislators. Actually, what that turns out to mean is that its employees were misled into thinking a plane had crashed, and didn’t bother checking the facts. Here’s a quote from one of those employees: “these people up in Oklahoma, they said that these people were like government officials, and they're trying to find them.” So the excuse is that Homeland Security’s workers are easily misled and don’t ask questions. I feel more secure already.

Here’s what the CIA said about those Iraqi mobile labs: "Coalition experts on fermentation and systems engineering examined the trailer found in late April and have been unable to identify any legitimate industrial use ... that would justify the effort and expense of a mobile production capability." And if you believe that, you should be quite worried about the fact that identical labs are for sale in the US.

It’s kind of nice knowing that I don’t have to ever hear Bill Clinton’s voice again, because I can’t afford it. He made 60 speeches last year at a dead minimum of $100,000 each, up to $250,000 abroad. “On November 19 in Mito City, on the outskirts of Tokyo, he spoke to 1,700 school pupils, attended a dinner and a political discussion the following morning, and flew away with $400,000. ‘He told our youth to have a dream,’ said Takashi Kawatsu, who runs the civic group that paid the former President.” Here’s my dream: being paid $150,000 just to tell kids to have a dream.

Canada’s government won’t appeal the court ruling upholding gay marriages. A couple of dozen have tied the knot already.

Yesterday Silvio Berlusconi actually showed up at his own trial, in order to denounce the trial and say that "It is true that the law is equal for all, but for me it is more equal because the majority of Italians voted for me." To add injury to that insult, his appearance was actually meant to filibuster the trial long enough for his tame parliament to rush through a law today immunizing stopping this and any other trial. You know the line about if you owe the bank a thousand dollars they own you, but if you owe the bank a billion dollars, you own the bank? Well, in the 1980s Berlusconi merely bribed judges (that’s what the trial is for); now, he can simply abolish the judiciary. Oh, and the parliament voted by secret ballot.

The Romanian gov retracts its assertion of last week that there was no Holocaust in Romania (after trying to get everyone to believe they meant only that there were no death camps on Romanian soil).

US soldiers in Iraq shoot at yet another crowd of unarmed protesters, killing two. A military spokesman said, “The Iraqis have got a lot to learn about how to demonstrate peacefully but we hope they will return in the future to exercise their right to freedom of expression.” Adding, “‘cuz we need the target practice.” Kidding, I kid--don’t shoot me. So they have “a lot to learn,” huh? And being fatally shot was, like, an F?

In that UN speech, Colin Powell claimed there were secret bioweapons labs beneath Saddam Hussein Hospital in Baghdad. There aren’t.

I seem to have mislaid a country, because I have no recollections of having noticed the Finnish government falling in March over accusations that it was secretly aiding Bush in the Iraq war. Anyway, the person who unseated that government to become the first woman PM of Finland, one Anneli Jaatteenmaki (does any name need that many double letters?), just resigned because she lied about whether or not she had solicited leaks of classified foreign ministry documents that she used in the debates.

Tony Blair is abolishing the post of Lord Chancellor, after 1,400 years. When criticized at Question Time by Iain Duncan Smith, he responded “He wants to fight to the death to keep the minister in charge of our courts system in a full-bottomed wig, 18th century breeches, women's tights, sitting on a woolsack rather than running the courts service.” Well as Clinton would say, have a dream.

So whatever happened to the 8-year old on life support in the Middle East? And what happened to the conscientious objector nephew of Netanyahu? His court martial was last month. The lack of follow-up is irritating.

Rumsfeld proves that Iraqi WMDs exist by applying logic: we can’t find Saddam Hussein either, but that doesn’t mean he never existed. Yeah, and you can’t find your own ass with both hands, but you have Colin Powell kiss it every morning just to make sure it’s there.

Paul Bremer announced plans to try Iraqi guerillas who attack occupation troops as criminals, which is a violation of international law, which recognizes the right to resist an occupation. Bremer also has ambitious plans to restructure the Iraqi economy, reversing the nationalization of the oil industry and selling off state industries. First, who is he to sell anything that belongs to the Iraqi people? At best, he can administer national assets, but actually sell them? Second, this would all be done before the Iraqis have any say in their own governance. In other words, Bremer is pre-empting decisions the Iraqis have a right to decide for themselves, if “freedom” and “democracy” are to mean anything.

The Supreme Court, in a decision that to me reads more ambiguous than anything else, rules that mentally-ill defendants can’t be forcibly medicated so they can be tried. They also ruled 8-1 that Antonin “Fat Tony” Scalia should “take a chill pill already.”

Sawing through a bridge? Al Qaeda must have Wile E. Coyote working for them now

This week the Calif. Legislature failed to pass a bill protecting privacy in banking and suchlike information. A pro-privacy lobby responded by putting 4 digits of the Social Security numbers of legislators who opposed the bill on their website, to make a point. The legislators are screaming like stuck pigs that their, um, privacy has been violated and that they are being put under undue pressure, which is illegal you know.

As opposed to State Senate Republican leader Jim Brulte, who promised to campaign in the primary against any Republicans who dared vote for a tax increase, thus wrecking any chances of a budget being done well, much less on time. This is part of the attempted recall-slash-coup attempt, to deny Gray Davis anything resembling a victory. Brulte has evidently been coordinating these efforts with Karl Rove and some of the people that brought us Florida’s Chad-Fest 2000.

Meanwhile, Der Arnold is trying to win his way into the governor’s mansion by puns and bad jokes. Here’s one:

Speaking to a taxpayers group in Los Angeles, Schwarzenegger joked: "This is really embarrassing. I just forgot our state governor's name. But I know you will help me recall him."

It’s much more terrible when you hear him say it. Attempted word-play by someone for whom words clearly take a lot of work.

There’s a good piece on this in Slate. Here’s the first paragraph:

Gray Davis has made a career out of being the incarnation of None of the Above, a ballot option made flesh. He's not popular, he's not inspiring, he's not likable, but he's also not the other candidate. Davis doesn't have supporters, really. Rather, he receives support from those who don't like his opponents. Which is what makes the attempt by California Republicans to petition for his recall so fascinating and so dangerous for the California governor: What happens when the None of the Above candidate actually squares off against None of the Above?

Speaking of Slate, you should be reading the William Saletan series on the buzzwords of the candidates. This is the latest, on Edwards, with links to the previous ones.

The polls continue to show that even though a majority of Americans believe Bush lied to them, they still support the Iraq War. The Big Shrug. When Lincoln said the thing about fooling some of the people etc., his underlying assumption was that people would react in some sort of negative fashion to being fooled.

The UN nuclear regulatory body (the IAEA) has issued a demand that Iran sign a protocol for more intrusive inspections than other countries have to undertake. The US wanted it to go further and say that Iran was in breach of its treaty obligations. The problem is that isn’t. I don’t see what the legal basis is for the IAEA demand. And if the inspections conducted under the existing non-proliferation regime aren’t good enough to detect a nuclear weapons program, that’s something of a worry to, isn’t it?

Ashcroft paraded an Al Qaeda gofer today, a guy who did basic intern work, none of which was especially illegal, since most of the dastardly plots he was involved with ended with “Nah, that wouldn’t work,” like the famed idea of sawing through the Brooklyn Bridge. So if you believe this was a major arrest, I’ve got something to sell you, and I think you know what it is.

Water polo rioting and wall-butting

From the Guardian: “Almost unnoticed outside Iraq, the senior US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, has issued a proclamation outlawing any "gatherings, pronouncements or publications" that call for the return of the Ba'ath party - or for opposition to the US occupation.” It goes on to point out that at the same time the Bush admin has been applauding demonstrators against the Iranian government (indeed, using radio & tv beamed into Iran to call for them). Indeed, Shrub himself said "I think that freedom is a powerful incentive. I believe that some day freedom will prevail everywhere because freedom is a powerful drive." But then, he may have been referring to freedom fries.

“A third of the American public believes U.S. forces found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, according to a recent poll. And 22 percent said Iraq actually used chemical or biological weapons in the war.” The poll also shows that supporters of the war were more likely to have their facts wrong.

The Financial Times suggests that that raid on a “terrorist training camp” in Iraq was actually the result of one tribe pointing the US military in the direction of a tribe it was feuding with--the sort of thing that happened in Afghanistan all the time.

This paragraph from Cursor.org: A June 13 article in the New York Times print edition, headlined "Goal Is To Lay Cornerstone at Ground Zero During GOP Convention," was changed in the Web edition to 'Officials Plan Speedy Ground Zero Environmental Review.' The last line in the lead paragraph was also changed, from "This would allow them to lay the cornerstone of a 1,776-foot tower in August 2004, during the Republican Convention," to "This would allow them to start construction by the summer of 2004."

The Sierra Club points out that the Ford Explorer gets worse gas mileage than the Model T. Get a horse, I say.

There are now fewer than 1 million Jews in New York city. Also, there are now more Jews in Israel than in the US.

Here’s a headline you don’t see every day: “Water-polo Rioting Spreads.” Croatia and Serbia.

“Austrian authorities have warned people not to copy a cult television show in which participants run at a wall and head-butt it while wearing a crash helmet after a man collapsed and died after doing it.” That’s in Salzburg, the home of Mozart. Who’d probably have loved wall-butting, now that I think of it.

Spartan Scorpion

A Californian convicted for participating in a kidnapping when he was 14 (and shooting at, but not hitting, cops), has been sentenced to life without parole, the youngest such sentence, or sentences, since he got 5 life sentences plus 121 years. The judge rejected the idea that this was excessive.

I have sometimes joked about genetically modified products leading to glowing in the dark. But they’re actually creating GM fish that glow in the dark, and that’s just cool.

The British government’s investigation concludes that the Iraqi mobile labs were indeed intended not to produce bioweapons but hydrogen for balloons (as I reported, but here’s the confirmation if you need one).

An article by Philip Knightley on the US military’s targeting of journalists (which reminds me that his book on the history of war reporting has been waiting for me to get to it for several years). A quote I’d missed: a US admiral who said that Al-Jazeera in Kabul was a legitimate target because it had “repeatedly been the location of significant al-Qaeda activity”--meaning interviews of Taliban officials, meaning normal journalism. Knightley concludes that the Pentagon is determined that no one report from the enemy side, and a few (seventeen) salutary deaths among journalists will encourage that.

From the Daily Telegraph: “Greek authorities have banned the sale of lollipops in the shape of the enormous penis on an ancient clay figure found in Larissa in the heart of the country.”

After the two massacres in Fallujah, you’d really think the US Army would just cut its losses and get out, but today they mounted another operation, oddly title Operation Spartan Scorpion, involving pointless arrests and kicking in doors. Almost more insulting is that the Americans still think after all the killing and abuse, they can win hearts and minds. Operation Spartan Scorpion was immediately followed by--wait for it--Operation Friends and Neighbors (maybe they thought that “Operation Fuzzy Puppy” would be a bit much), in which troops delivered food to teachers, put ceiling fans in schools and built soccer fields. A captain is quoted as saying that it’s been difficult to switch from "killing everything we saw to being nice". Tell me about it.

Woody Allen is appearing in a promotional video urging Americans to travel to France and put all that unpleasantness behind us. In the video he reminds us of some other past unpleasantness by saying “I will not have to freedom-kiss my wife when all I want to do is French kiss her.”