Wolverines!

The Pentagon slapped that lt. col. who fired the gun next to the POW’s head and had his subordinates beat the guy up, with a jolly big fine ($5,000). He is planning to retire. On full pension, of course.

The capture of Saddam was “Operation Red Dawn”, inspired by one of the crappiest movies I ever laughed my ass off while watching (only slightly unsettled by the fact that nobody else in the theater was laughing)(Halliwell’s Film Guide: “Violent teenage nonsense”). Quotes here.

Seriously, this was a rabid, jingoistic, incredibly stupid movie, so you could see why folks in the Pentagon like it, but using its name in this context is a public relations no-no on the scale of “crusade.”

I can’t seem to work up any enthusiasm. That Hussein wasn’t killed, and indeed let himself be taken alive, will help demythologize him, which is all to the good. The Resistance will have to find something better to fight for, assuming that just fighting against the American occupation isn’t enough.

Now who on earth gets to try him, where will he be held, and will somebody start taking hostages in order to demand his release? The slimy answer to the first was no doubt provided by the suspiciously timed establishment by the establishment by the fake Iraqi government of a war crimes show-trial court just a couple of days ago.

I got to see the Commander in Chimp do his victory smirk this morning, which is one reason I’m a little light on the enthusiasm. The photo op of my enemy is my enemy, or something like that. At least it occurred way before the elections, although if Saddam is tried and convicted in, say, October, I won’t be especially...surprised.

And, say, weren’t we the ones complaining when the Iraqis showed pictures of our POWs? So what’s with the “Open up and say ah, Mr. Dictator” footage? Much less parading him like a zoo animal before Ahmad Chalabi.

The Economist on new freedoms for Kurds in Turkey: “A new porn video, Xashiki Kaliki (Grandad's Fantasies) is selling well: until recently, it would have been banned, not for its content but for being in the Kurdish language.”

Grandad's Fantasies?

When did you last pray for your stockbroker?

So I don’t have to write about it, here’s a link to Molly Ivins on the decision to deregulate mercury. A good article, but I have one caveat. She says mercury is one suspect in recent increases in autism, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Actually, that’s recent increases in diagnoses of those diseases, none of which can be proven without an autopsy. Increases in diagnoses may not be related to actual incidences of the diseases, but to 1) increased awareness of the diseases, 2) increased medical trendiness of the diagnosis. Autism is this decade’s ADD, the label to put on any child not behaving “normally.” Autism is no doubt a real disease, but the diagnosis procedure is ridiculous. There are 9 possible symptoms; if you have 4 [my numbers may be off, but the 2nd number is definitely ½ of the 1st number minus 1] you can be diagnosed as autistic, meaning two people without a single symptom in common can be diagnosed with the same disease. In other words, neurology is voodoo.

Reality tv reaches the Arab world: who wants an arranged marriage?

And in Pakistan, a man who blinded his fiancé with acid is sentenced to...if you guessed, be blinded with acid, you are correct!

You’d think opponents of gay marriage wouldn’t object to gay divorce, wouldn’t you?

Neither sheep nor fools

An internal memo from Diebold, the creepy voting machine company, suggests making it “prohibitively expensive” for states to require printed receipts. The memo was obtained by a hacker, which tells you everything you need to know about the security of any ballot operated by these clowns.

The US authorizes the creation of a new secret police in Iraq, at least partly staffed by members of the old secret police, to be run by a former exile who no doubt has his own get-even list.

Just received the first campaign mailer of the 2004 elections. Evidently there will be a county initiative to ban Wal-Mart. Guess who the mailer was from. Did you know that “Not everyone can afford to shop at fancy department stores”? I weep for those people, forever shut out from the Sears’s and Targets of this world.

A must-read about gerrymandering. If that doesn’t sound like a must-read, just trust me and read it anyway. It explains why Congressional elections barely matter any more.

I wasn’t going to mention the last D debate, especially since I didn’t see it, but I’ve seen excerpts and transcripts now, and Ted Koppel should be horse-whipped. He kept talking about process stuff that no voter cares about (and no voter SHOULD care about), tried to humiliate the lesser candidates into bursting into tears and resigning their candidacies on the spot, accusing Carol Moseley Braun of being a vanity candidate (which she is, but 1) she was a United States Senator, 2) I don’t think he’d have used the term to a male candidate, 3) it’s not his job to say so, 4) and certainly not in that forum). Koppel has been quoted by the Post as wanting a smaller field to make the debates better, or better drama anyway. And the day after the debate, ABC withdrew coverage from the 3 candidates Koppel attacked. Forget Al Gore’s alleged arrogance for daring to express his opinion, what about ABC’s arrogance? Also, aren’t Kucinich, Braun and Sharpton the 3 candidates who are furthest to the left? What gets left out when they’re gone?

Of course the day after Kucinich berated Koppel for not treating him as a serious candidate, he went on a date selected for him by a political website, with the tv cameras rolling.

In Britain, a Labour MP has also been using the internet to trawl for dates. Chris Bryant MP appeared in underwear on the site and declared that he enjoys “a good long fuck.” The site is...wait for it...gaydar.co.uk.

Italy bans fertility treatment and egg and sperm donation for gays, single people and older women, and makes several other decisions about fertility treatments that are none of the state’s business. Italy lacked virtually any regulation of such matters precisely because it is a Catholic country, and the Church fought any law that didn’t follow its orders precisely.

40% of the Iraqis the US was training for the new Iraqi army have quit, because they weren’t paid enough. I wonder who they’ll be selling that training to?

In his dissent to the decision upholding McCain-Feingold campaign finance rules, Scalia wrote, “The premise of the First Amendment is that the American people are neither sheep nor fools, and hence fully capable of considering both the substance of the speech presented to them and its proximate and ultimate source.” Is that what the premise of the 1st Amendment is? Boy, that is SO off-base.

The majority of the Supes took the position that issue ads and soft money constituted corruption, rather than speech.

Speaking of corruption, Bush responded to questions about the illegality in international law of his attempts to use contracts in Iraq to reward his supporters with what he evidently thought was a joke: “International law? I'd better call my lawyer.” He explained carefully, like someone explaining to idiots something so obvious it didn’t need explanation, that only companies whose home countries had sacrificed some 18-year olds (“friendly coalition folks risk their lives”) deserved to charge $2.64 to import a gallon of gas, even though none of the executives of those companies were related to those 18-year olds.

On the table

LA Times: “Retreating from two central campaign promises that helped make him governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday dropped his personal "guarantee" that cities and counties would be compensated for billions in lost car-tax revenue and reversed his pledge to safeguard spending for public schools.” It’s official, he has now broken every promise he ever made in political life, and all within one month of taking office. During the elections he said that education cuts would be over his dead body. So when his spokesmodel said that everything was on the table....

Name in the News: president of Friends of Animals in Darien, CT: Priscilla Feral.

More Fun Facts to Learn and Then Instantly Forget: Nicholas Kristof writes in the NYT that no US company makes bras.

Did you know the US has a Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues? Name of, ahem, Edward O’Donnell. Because you wouldn’t want a Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues who couldn’t get into the same country club as Dubya. No, wait, that doesn’t work--they probably don’t let in Irish either. Anyway, he says that the anti-Americans in Europe are all anti-semites.

In the London production of The Producers, Richard Dreyfuss is doing the Zero Mostel role. Could work.

Switzerland’s governing coalition gives in to the far right’s blackmail and lets its chairman into the cabinet.

Creepy Christian children’s site. Scroll down to “Habu’s Corner.” And below that, it asks the question, “What should you do if you find an Atheist?”

Senator Paul Simon dies. Every obit feels obligated to mention his funny little bow ties, none mention his really weird ears.

Very, very forceful. Very.

I
ndy headline: “Cannibal Denies Sexual Motive.” Oh good, so it’s not like he’s some sort of pervert, then.

Seymour Hersh on the US’s use of Operation Phoenix tactics in Iraq, secretly advised by Israel. “Preemptive manhunting,” indeed.

Bush tells Taiwan not to “provoke” China by holding a referendum asking it to stop pointing quite so many missiles at the “province.” Trust Bush to see things from the bully’s perspective. Taiwan did not immediately respond that it would not take advice from a renegade British colony. Amusingly, Bush criticized Taiwan’s actions as “unilateral.” Do as we say, not as we do. He didn’t actually mention the proposed referenda on missiles and sovereignty, because that would make explicit his rejection of the right of self-determination by the Taiwanese--in the same way that PM Wen talked about separatism under the “signboard of democracy”--but instead personalized his criticism against the “leader” of Taiwan.

Bush is buying into China’s representation of itself as so hyper-sensitive that it will go ape-shit if it doesn’t get its way all the time, in every excruciatingly explicit detail--no doubt the reason Bush couldn’t bring himself to use the Taiwanese president’s actual name in front of the Chinese prime minister. That princess and the pea thing has worked pretty well for China in getting other countries, especially the US, not to “provoke” it. According to White House officials, Bush was “very, very forceful” in warning off China from attacking Taiwan--in private; those who saw the public performance noted that Wen said that Bush opposed Taiwanese independence, which is not supposed to be US policy.

Repulsively, Wen cited Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War in support of his position.

Bush said, and I’m pretty sure these are the exact words he’s used before, “The United States policy is one China.” What’s that, a Zen koan? There are words missing from that sentence, without which it’s close to meaningless: US policy is (that there is) one China; US policy is (that there should be just) one China...

Governor Ahhnuld has decided not to investigate himself for groping women after all. Seems it isn’t necessary after all because “the people have spoken.” They’ve said “Ouch, stop pinching my ass.”

William Saletan points out that when Al Gore was “trailing in the Florida recount, [he] urged the nation to wait until all the votes were tallied,” but his endorsement of Dean is intended to short-circuit a democratic process that hasn’t even started yet.

Some are portraying Gore’s choice of Dean over Lieberman as a sign that Gore has moved left. Possibly, but let’s take him at his own words, from today: “All of us need to get behind the strongest candidate.” Pure cynicism. Indeed, he told the other candidates to shut up and stop criticizing Dean. “We can’t afford to be divided.” In other words, the great Al Gore has had his say, lesser mortals should now desist from expressing their views. If the other candidates took that advice, tonight’s debate must have been as dull as it is possible for any such event to be, unless of course Al Gore participated--that would make it duller. Arguably, Saletan’s condemnation of Gore for opening his mouth is the mirror image of Gore’s advice to the other candidates to shut up and slink away. And everyone imputes to Gore way more influence in the real world than he actually has.

I’m using more dashes and fewer parentheses today. Have you noticed?

From AP: “The Pentagon has formally barred companies from countries opposed to the Iraq war from bidding on $18.6 billion worth of reconstruction contracts.” The policy is in a memo from Paul Wolfowitz, which says it “is necessary for the protection of the essential security interests of the United States.” How does excluding Canadian companies protect US security, precisely?

A moot point

Something to think about re prescription drugs: they don’t work. A VP at GlaxoSmithKline admits that "The vast majority of drugs - more than 90 per cent - only work in 30 or 50 per cent of the people."

John Kerry’s campaign is pronounced dead because he used the “F word” in an interview in Rolling Stone: “Did I expect George Bush to fuck it up as badly as he did? I don’t think anybody did.”

Andrew Card on CNN today (where he said that he was very, very disappointed with Mr. Kerry’s language) said that the question of whether the US went to war with Iraq based on faulty intelligence was “a moot point” (because evidently Saddam was a bad, bad person)(who knew?).

I hate it when the funny news stories have some importance when you look past the first paragraph. Here is that first paragraph, from a Post story: “H. James Towey, director of the White House's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, has stirred up a pot of trouble by suggesting that pagans don't care about the poor.” Asked whether such groups should get federal funding, Towey says “Once you make it clear to any applicant that public money must go to public purposes and can't be used to promote ideology, the fringe groups lose interest. Helping the poor is tough work, and only those with loving hearts seem drawn to it.” In other words, the government will decide which religions have loving hearts, and which are fringe groups. Also, the article points out that many pagan groups are deeply involved yadda yadda yadda.

Aggressive headscarves

The officials overseeing Sunday’s Russian parliamentary elections are under the authority of the KGB. There are already signs of massive fraud, but it doesn’t matter. What I said here during the last Russian election still holds: this is another non-issues election campaign. Putin’s party literally lacks a platform. A vote for it is a vote for fill in the blank, and that is not representative democracy but electoral dictatorship (and I only use the word electoral because I think Putin would win even without stealing the election). Also, access to the media for opposition parties is nill.

And there is a terrorist attack blamed on the Chechens, just as there is before every Russian election in which Putin is involved. Coincidence, I’m sure.

FORGIVE, FORGET: Bush appoints James Baker to lead the effort to restructure Iraq’s debt, which means get other nations to ignore that country’s past debts, just like Baker was chosen in 2000 to get the courts to ignore the results of the presidential elections. (Did that symmetry work? I think it sounded better in my head than it does on screen.) Iraq owes between $200 and 400 billion. The US also likes to forget how much money it owes, (given the boom in national debt begun by Reagan’s Treasury secretary, one James Baker) as Paul Krugman points out in a good NYT column (but for the hell of it, I’m linking to Pravda).

Joshua Marshall points out that Baker has way too many business links to Saudi Arabia for this to be a good appointment.

Chirac says Islamic headscarves are a kind of aggression. “We cannot accept ostentatious displays, of whatever sort, of religious proselytising.” If you’ve already seen this story, you might have noticed that he made these statements in Tunisia, and wondered about the choice of location. In fact, they are illegal in Tunisia.

“A woman who drove over a McDonald's manager, causing her serious internal injuries in a row over a cheeseburger, has been jailed for 10 years. Waynetta Nolan, 37, flew into a rage after she was refused mayonnaise in Houston, Texas.”

From AP: “Democrat John F. Kerry on Friday challenged the notion that questioning President Bush is unpatriotic and defended his right to criticize, saying he left "some blood on a battlefield that President Bush never left anywhere."” Well he did choke on a pretzel once. I’m getting sick of Kerry using military service in a stupid war, that even he admits was a stupid war, as if it was a qualification for anything.

Some newly declassified State Dept papers from the 1970s implicate Kissinger even more deeply in the atrocities in Chile, that he in fact gave an explicit green light. Why nothing in the NY Times or, I think, the Post? Instead, I give you the Guardian, and the Miami Herald.



The soldiers who had Thanksgiving with the Turkey in Chief were actually screened by their commanding officers.

Maybe "terror socks of death" would be more frightening. Or not.

I’m sorry, Daily Telegraph, it is impossible to take this headline seriously: “Terror Socks Seized.”

An article elsewhere in the Telegraph on Nigerian fraudsters says that their business is, sadly, declining. It confirms something I’d always suspected, that the spelling and grammar mistakes were mostly deliberate, to convince people they were dealing with uneducated Africans.

How big is the illegal trafficking in human organs? An Israeli was just fined c.$750 in South Africa, with no jail time, for having an illegal kidney transplant there. Basically just sales tax. Israelis are big in this market, in part because their insurance companies, unlike those in any other country, are allowed to pay for black market organs.

NY Times article on the Israeli methods now being used by US forces in Iraq: villages sealed off, punishment house demolitions, kidnappings of relatives of suspected guerillas, etc. I like this detail: the i.d. cards those in the sealed villages have to carry are in English only. And this priceless quote: “"With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them," Colonel Sassaman said.”

The NY Times catches up to an overlooked detail in the Medicare bill: private Medicap policies covering drugs will be banned. Because they believe that old sick people must be forced to pay something when they are stupid enough to be both old and sick, so that they won’t overuse medical services. Nor will they be allowed to have a policy that will pay for drugs not on the government list of favored drugs.

Oh the smelly humanity

AP headline: “Goodyear Blimp Crashes into Fertilizer Pile, Injures One.”

Good article on border control. In the last decade, at least 2,500 Mexicans died trying to cross through deserts or mountains, the obvious but presumably unintended consequence of making it harder to cross at safer places. In the Berlin Wall’s entire history, only 287 people died trying to cross it. Enforcement that would actually impact businesses has declined, even from 2000 when a total of 178 American employers were fined for employing illegal aliens. Well, to be fair, how do we know that more than 178 American employers even hired illegal aliens, right? The article mentions a border patrol unit comprised entirely of Native Americans, called the Irony Brigade, sorry, the Shadow Wolves.

Bush has indeed lifted steel tariffs, as of 10 minutes from now, as I write. Um, since when is the power to set tariffs held by the executive branch, anyway? The White House statement on this decision is hilarious. I said on Monday that they’d be declaring victory, that the tariffs had done their job, but they’ve actually gone so far beyond that, actually pretending that the decision had absolutely nothing to do with the WTO decision or the imminent imposition of retaliatory tariffs by the EU, that the timing is just a big coincidence. They’re not even attempting to make their lies plausible anymore. And they’re so committed to doing everything unilaterally that they wouldn’t even spin it as respecting the concerns of our allies in the war on terror. Read it if you don’t believe me.

Another reason the US doesn’t care that much about increased poppy production in Afghanistan: that heroine goes to Europe, not to the US.

B-1 Bob is back: Bob Dornan is talking about running for Congress against Dana Rohrabacher. Boy, that could be fun.

Endomorphically endowed

The US has decided that 5 Iraqi political parties (including Chalabi’s, and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) can have their own armed militias/death squads, subject to some minor conditions that won’t mean a thing on the ground. ‘Cuz the warlord thing is working out so well for us in Afghanistan.

Although to be fair, the biggest Afghan warlord, Gen. Dostum, has supposedly just agreed to hand in his heavy weapons, in exchange for absolute power in the north, a seat in the Cabinet and millions of dollars of international aid.

Of course most of what the world community sends to Afghanistan is in exchange for the now plentiful poppy. A Guardian columnist notes that the US has suddenly gotten interested again in that harvest. “The reason for the belated concern is the fear that it is funding the wrong warriors - the resurgent jihadis and the Taliban.”

If you like freak shows (and who doesn’t?), you should be following the trial in Germany of the man who posted on the Internet asking for volunteers to be killed and eaten. Indy headline: “Cannibal Says He Was Lonely and Dreamt of 'Brother' to Disembowel.” The Times has “Eaten by a Thoroughly Modern Cannibal.”

Russia has decided to kill the Kyoto Accord, rather than simply ratify it and then break the rules and fail to meet the targets, like everyone else.

Something I just heard that may not be wrong just because I read it on the Internet: the Israeli “wall” will not only put 10% of West Bank land on the Israeli side, but 50% of the water.

The Cincinnati coroner rules the beating death of the 400-pound guy by the police a homicide.

Gerhard Schröder is in China, calling for the EU to resume arms sales to that country, which has been under embargo since Tiananmen Square. Of course it was only last week that China threatened to go to war with Taiwan if it holds a referendum on independence. France also backs arms sales, but when doesn’t it?

Polls show that Bush’s Thanksgiving stunt earned him 5 points in the polls.

Melvyn Bragg, author of The Adventure of English 500AD-2000, has pointed out that every word of Churchill’s "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills: we shall never surrender." is from the Old English except for “surrender,” which is French.

(Attention, people who googled in looking for a sound clip of the Churchill speech: there's one here, a zip file.)

13-day old kid most likely to need major analysis: “ a Palestinian baby who was born with a birthmark on his face that bears a striking likeness to the name of his uncle, Ala, right, a Hamas militant killed by Israeli soldiers after he allegedly masterminded a suicide bombing. Palestinians in the West Bank are travelling in droves to Bethlehem to pay homage to the 13-day-old infant, also named Ala. His family is convinced that the mark is a divine message of support for the Palestinian struggle against Israel.”

Remember Thailand’s war on drugs? Like the US, they stopped counting dead bodies on that one when it got embarrassingly high, 10 months ago, which I’m embarrassed to say is also the last time I mentioned it here. Anyway, they’ve declared victory, with a death toll of 2,300, and 52,364 of the usual suspects rounded up.

Every year the Literary Review, in London, sponsors a Bad Sex Prize for the worst sex scenes in literature (astonishingly, I quote from the winner every single year). This year’s was one by an Indian author, Aniruddha Bahal, and here’s the thing: his publishers flew him from Delhi to London to accept the prize.

From the Guardian: “Columnist and former Today programme editor Rod Liddle was almost struck out on the grounds that his sex scenes were actually rather well done, but his novel Too Beautiful for You, ("after a modicum of congenial thrusting, she came with the exhilarating whoops and pant-hoots of a troop of Rhesus monkeys") was reinstated after he said the judges were unqualified, since nobody on the Literary Review had had sex since 1936, in Abyssinia.”

The Times describes the winning passage as “too excruciating for a family newspaper.” So I got it from the Guardian: “She's taking off her blouse. It's on the floor. Her breasts are placards for the endomorphically endowed. In spite of yourself a soft whistle of air escapes you. She's taking off her trousers now. They are a heap on the floor. Her panties are white and translucent. You can see the dark hair sticking to them inside. There's a design as well. You gasp.

'What's that?' you ask. You see a designer pussy. Hair razored and ordered in the shape of a swastika. The Aryan denominator..."

Oh yeah, that’s some bad sex all right.

Full of giblets

Governor Ahhnuld says he now understands what people who warned him that the budget would require hard choices meant. Oh sure, NOW he figures out how unqualified and unprepared he is.

Speaking of things it would be better to have planned in advance, The Daily Show suggested that Bush’s visit to Iraq might have some lessons for the war in Iraq. “For instance, when it comes to planning...do some. And lesson two of the Thanksgiving trip - when it comes to an exit strategy...have one.” Bush knew when he was leaving, and how he was leaving: by 2:00, and full of giblets.

Anyway, California. Though I’m pretty sure Arnie promised to fix the deficit entirely by opening the books and finding tens of billions of dollars of waste, or maybe two pages inadvertently stuck together, oddly enough there’s damned little talk of that now. He does however, want a mandatory spending cap, with extra powers for the governor to make budget cuts entirely on his own (which could be overturned by 2/3 of the Lege, but c’mon) if during the middle of a year the state starts running a deficit.

A Ha’aretz article looks at a government pamphlet on democracy, which fails to mention Palestinians, but does say that as a Jewish democratic state, which it defines by saying that Israel “accepts every Jew wherever he is and respects the values of
Jewish culture and heritage”. Something to remember the next time someone says that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.

One reason the military tribunals haven’t begun is that the first group of defense lawyers recruited by the Pentagon balked at the ground-rules, and were promptly fired.

From his jail cell in the Hague, Milosevic will run for the Serb parliament. He can do that because he hasn’t been convicted yet, because it’s only, what, the 3rd year of his trial, 8th year? 73rd year?

And Prince Alexander II wants to see monarchy restored. The prince was born in 1945, the year the monarchy was abolished. He was born in Claridge’s hotel in London. Problem was that a Yugoslav monarch had to be born on Yugoslav soil, so Churchill declared suite 212 of Claridge’s to be Yugoslav territory. No word on whether it still is.

The Thai prime minister plans to ban MPs from his party having mistresses or going to brothels. There is a mass revolt. The party’s name is Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais).

The new head of Australia’s Labor Party is a man who called Bush “the most incompetent and dangerous president in living memory” and John Howard an “arse licker,” and once broke a taxi driver’s arm in a dispute over what was the fastest route.

NY Times: “The federal official who runs Medicare and was intimately involved in drafting legislation to overhaul the program is the object of a bidding war among five firms hoping to hire him to advise clients affected by the measure.” Thomas Scully got an ethics waiver from the DHS (or is that an ethics bypass?).

A French scientist withdrew his life savings from the bank, about $1/4 million, set it on fire, then tried to commit suicide by taking pills. Unfortunately, his neighbors saw the smoke, called the fire department, and now he is alive and broke.

Calm as a Belgian

The 46 killed yesterday are now 54, except there are no actual bodies, they just made it up based on what US soldiers said they’d done. Locals say 8. The commander opines that the remaining guerillas must have carried off the 54 dead bodies. Oh yeah, that’s believable: under heavy fire, they carried 54 corpses (plus presumably all of their wounded), in, what, wheelbarrows? stretchers? and got them right out of the area, so that none could be found.

And of course most of the dead “guerillas” turned out to include an awful lot of civilians, whoever was around when US soldiers started shooting in all directions. Who says Iraq isn’t like Vietnam?

And in this way too: “Sgt Jones said when the two convoys had driven into Samarra on Sunday, the city centre was a virtual ghost town, suggesting that the civilian population knew the ambushes were about to happen.”

There was a tribute to the victims of Franco (still dead) in Spain’s parliament building. The right-wing ruling party boycotted the event because it reopened old wounds and “smelt of mothballs.”

Haven’t seen it, but there is a film of Cincinnati police beating a black man to death. They say it was self-defense. He was 400 pounds. Says the head of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP!!), "In that video, what did these officers do wrong?" Uh, beat a guy to death? Beat a guy after he was lying on the ground? And why were they equipped with steel clubs, anyway?

The Lithuanian parliament is about to impeach the president, who evidently has Russian mafia ties. He says he won’t leave even if impeached, adding “I am as calm as a Belgian.”

Which is pretty fucking calm.

George Monbiot gives an outline of how badly we’re screwed, given the taboo fact that oil is running out.

Alessandra Mussolini, Benito’s granddaughter and former stripper, quit the neo-post-fascist party after its leader said bad things about the Upside Down One, and has formed her own party, called
Freedom of Action. It will be“futuristic and feminist”.

And the White House evidently made up a story about a BA pilot recognizing Air Force One.

A great two weeks (for those who survived them)

Gen. Sanchez’s words, the only ones quoted anyway, were that there had been “a great two weeks for the coalition.” In addition to the deaths I mentioned in my last, the Resistance killed some South Koreans and a Colombian.

Today, the US responds by killing 46 Iraqis, and what’s interesting about that is that the Pentagon has released a body count, possibly the first one.

Speaking of body counts, let’s see if you can catch the mistake in this sentence in a Times (London) story: “November was by far the bloodiest month since the invasion”. That’s right: it was only the bloodiest month FOR AMERICANS (79 dead, 105 for the COW as a whole). So the Pentagon was right: if dead Iraqis aren’t counted, dead Iraqis don’t count.

The Times notes that the American media, unlike the British, are not covering Neil Bush’s admissions about having sex with prostitutes. Neil, by the way, also has a consulting “job” with New Bridge, which uses R contacts to secure contracts in Iraq for its clients.

The US is evidently finally willing to admit that some of those locked up without trial in Guantanamo for the last two years were simply nobodies kidnapped by Afghan war lords and such for the reward money. Time magazine says the government is just waiting for a “politically propitious time.” Christmas Day? And the San Jose Mercury (link below) says that they’re still holding 3 children. Excuse me, “juvenile enemy combatants.” They are sometimes given a “time-out,” the story says. Yeah, two years and counting. They are of course interrogated, but no more than 16 hours a day, like the other prisoners, so that’s ok then.

Evidently the Bushies are going to give up their illegal steel tariffs, right before the EU was set to retaliate against products from marginal states. They’re going to pretend that the tariff had succeeded in protecting the steel industry while it restructured itself, so we didn’t need it anymore anyway. In the 20 months the tariffs have been in place, I have yet to see a news story that gives me the most basic information necessary to understand how this works. How much did steel imports decline? How much did the federal government collect by levying this illegal tariff, and do they get to keep it, and if they could just do that for 20 months, well after the WTO ruled it illegal, and give in right before sanctions were due to start, doesn’t that mean there is no down-side to this lawlessness?

Other expertized advices

Afghanistan has resumed enforcing an old Taliban law against married women (girls) going to high school. They might give the other girls the low-down about s-e-x. Thousands have been expelled.

Neil Bush’s contract with Grace Semiconductors specified that he provide them business strategies, information and “other expertized advices.” Oh yeah, that’s a Bush.

The British Yellow Pages have decided to scrap the category “sword makers.” Responds one sword maker, “I suppose it’s been coming for years. We’ve been going downhill since the 19th century when duelling was made illegal.”

Northern Irish elections gave a typically bloody-minded result, with parties on both extremes surpassing the moderates. Ian Paisley is happy, and that is never a good thing. The SDLP is thinking about giving up altogether and becoming a branch of a southern Irish party.

A Post story about something I’ve mentioned before, the growing phenomenon of politicians, including the chairs of the Senate and House armed services committees, defending that lt. col. who threatened to murder an Iraqi POW in order to scare him into providing information (the people who defend him don’t admit that he threatened to kill the POW, but what message is shooting off a gun next to his head intended to convey?).

There’s also a piece here and in the NY Times either Saturday or Sunday, which convey the consensus that Bush’s latest plan to hand over power to Iraq by June, is deader’n a dodo. What’d that take, two weeks? Which is still longer than most of our strategies in Iraq have lasted, so well done.

The astonishing thing is not the 7 Spaniards and 2 Japanese and 2 Americans killed in Iraq a few hours after General Sanchez bragged that attacks were down, it’s that yet another US official made yet another stupid pollyannaish claim that was sure to be followed by some sort of rocket attack, because they all are. (I’d have used Sanchez’s exact words, but they are to be found nowhere, which to my mind is another example of the press sparing such jackasses the embarrassment they have earned.)

By the way, I spent many emails last spring making a running joke of the absence of Iraqis dancing in the streets to greet our troops, as we were promised. From today’s LA Times: “Video footage from the scene, broadcast throughout the Arab world, showed rejoicing youths dancing alongside the burned remains of the four-wheel-drive vehicles. Many of the celebrants brandished parts of the vehicles.” (You can tell it’s a Los Angeles reporter when he makes more of a dead motor vehicle than a dead person. They do love their cars.) Anyway, dancing, finally. I’d have made a comment about how they just needed the right lyrics, but again, the newspapers didn’t give Sanchez’s exact words.

The turkey has landed

9:47 pm a racoon scratched at the door. I did not share my humble repast with it, nor teach it how to plant maize so that it might survive the difficult winter ahead, but rather chased it off, as the Indians might have been well advised to do with the Puritans.

A LITTLE TOUCH OF MORON IN THE NIGHT: Dubya makes a surprise Thanksgiving visit to the troops in Iraq. Haven’t they suffered enough?

Oo, the Indy headline is The Turkey Has Landed. Less literary than mine, but I like it.

Bush told the troops, “We did not charge hundreds of miles through the heart of Iraq, pay a bitter cost of casualties, defeat a ruthless dictator and liberate 25 million people only to retreat before a band of thugs and assassins.” We? You just came for dinner. The only bitter cost you paid was a little jet lag.

Bush was visiting the 82nd Airborne, which the Times points out has a less than stellar record, having killed 18 unarmed protesters in Fallujah in April and 8 Iraqi police and a Jordanian guard in September. So don’t fault Bush for not venturing out of the airport: just eating with these guys must be pretty dangerous. I imagine they only manage to get the fork into their mouths about half the time, while stabbing themselves and each other repeatedly. Probably at the end of every meal, three or four have to be evacuated with severe mashed potato-related injuries.

(Later: the Guardian adds that yesterday an Iraqi general died while being “interrogated” by the 82nd.)

Sharon reneges on his promise to Bush to dismantle settlement outposts. Evidently some of them are necessary for “security.” You know, the amount of shit done in the name of “security” this year throughout the world may have reached some sort of record.

The Chinese are setting Mao’s Two Musts to rap music. I think that’s called sampling. The Two Musts are “to preserve modesty and prudence and to preserve the style of plain living and hard struggle.” Oh, sorry, that’s now “to preserve modesty and prudence and to preserve the style of plain living and hard struggle, bitch.”

While looking for more Neil Bush tidbits (and found one: one of his businesses outsourced to Mexico; his ex-wife’s lawyer asked him if that wasn’t an example of Ross Perot’s giant sucking sound), I came across a German site that says Bush Sr and John Hinckley’s father were in business together, and that John’s brother and Neil were scheduled to have dinner the day after John tried to kill Reagan. That’s almost too weird to be true.

Fatwas, Nixonburgers, the King Herod of the Labour Party, the orgasmotran, and turkey and gravy flavored soda

A fascinating, must-read (but long), WaPo article on how the US’s plans to impose a constitution of our making on Iraq failed. Hint: fatwa.

As punishment for the Wall, Israel’s loan guarantees will be cut slightly. Actually outright grants won’t be cut at all, and the actual effect on the Israeli budget may amount to at most a couple million. In other words, this was not a punishment intended to change their behaviour or be anything other than cosmetic.

Another Neil Bush detail: in December 2001 Jiang Zemin threw him a private dinner, at which Jiang “serenaded him with a military song.” I think Neil would have preferred a hooker. Speaking of presidential brothers, I of course remember Billy Beer, but a restaurant chain named “Nixonburger”?

Today was the state opening of Parliament. The Queen made a mistake reading the speech, referring to the National Health Service as the National Hunt. That’s one way to cut medical costs. One of the bills Labour wants is to force asylum-seekers to leave the country by eliminating their benefits, and taking their children from them (for their own good of course, because their parents would no longer be getting benefits, you see). Writes Home Secretary David Blunkett, “I have no desire to take children from parents and put them in care unless it is an absolute last resort.” Oh well, if it’s the absolute last resort, that’s ok then. He adds, “I did not come into politics to be the King Herod of the Labour party.” And yet...

In Britain, an 80-year old woman was writing her will when burglars broke in. She fought them off with a World War I ceremonial sword.

Shevardnadze says that the West betrayed him after he “rescued the world” from the brink of nuclear armageddon by ending the Cold War. Evidently he thinks he should have been allowed to keep a country as, you know, a tip.

An unlikely story: “Trials of an implant that promises to give women an orgasm at the push of a button have stalled because of a lack of volunteers to test it.”

The town of Corleone, Sicily, is thinking of changing its name. Possibly to Soprano.

Turkey and gravy flavored soda.

The LA Times recently ran a story I missed on Wal-Mart. Today a columnist, Steve Lopez, wonders, why does a polo shirt cost $8.63? “Because of the way Wal-Mart does business in America and beyond: A. Your Uncle Ed's factory went under and he's on the dole,
B. A couple dozen merchants got rocked by the ripple effect,
C. A nail was driven into the coffin that used to be a quaint downtown,
D. That Honduran mom made $7 for 10 hours of toil,
E. A Chinese company is probably plotting to underbid the Hondurans,
F. Wal-Mart execs padded their mega-million-dollar portfolios,
G. And our taxes are going up because Wal-Mart employees who can't afford health insurance are dragging themselves into the county emergency room.

If that's the cost to you and me and everyone else, that polo shirt ought to be $5.99 and not a penny more, or we're being seriously ripped off.” He thinks the woman in the Honduran sweatshop is not pulling her weight.

I got the inside scoop on sea urchin longevity right here

Scandinavia, you gotta love it: Norway’s vehicle registration dept has refused to register the prime minister’s new bomb-proof car, because it is too heavy, increasing its stopping distance.

On the other hand, a Sydney, Australia airport screener insisted on frisking the New Zealand prime minister, even after being told who she was.

Heh heh heh: “A Ku Klux Klan member was badly wounded when a bullet fired in the air during an initiation ceremony in Tennessee came down and hit him in the head. Gregory Freeman, 45, was charged with aggravated assault and reckless endangerment after Jeffery Murr, 24, was left critically ill. About 10 people had gathered for the ceremony. The initiate was blindfolded, tied with a noose to a tree and shot with paintball guns as Freeman fired a pistol.”

From the Department of Fun Facts to Learn and Then Instantly Forget: Sea urchins can live for 200 years.

I’m undecided whether to consider the events in Georgia to be an American-backed coup or not. Many Georgians are none too sure either. Certainly Russia, which has been funding separatist movements, and the US, are in competition for “influence” in Georgia. And both have troops stationed there. The US will pay for the new parliamentary elections, in 45 days. Today the new prime minister phoned BP and the UN--quite possibly in that order.

The Iraqi puppet government--you know, I’m going to stop calling them that, since Bremer may well be Chalabi’s puppet at this point--has banned the Arab news network Al-Arabiya for playing a tape supposedly from Saddam, and has been removing imams for preaching stuff the Government Formerly Known as Puppet doesn’t like.

Holy Joe Lieberman whines: “I always thought we Democrats were the party of inclusion, not exclusion.” He’s not contesting Iowa, so he decided to skip the debate there, then changed his mind and bitched when they wouldn’t let him. Or maybe they just forgot he was still running.

Franco's unsheathed sword, if you know what I mean

Evidently those soldiers didn’t have their throats cut or beaten with concrete blocks, if the army is to be believed.

Bush meets (away from cameras) with the families of soldiers killed in Iraq and offers his prayers, in perhaps the crappiest trade of all time.

The mother of one dead soldier, not at that event, helpfully pointed out that Bush could have dropped by when he was recently in her state, SC, for a fundraiser. If the D’s had any guts, they’d provide a map to the nearest families of dead soldiers for every future Bush fundraiser.

Governor Ahhnuld has cut the car tax increase. And proposed cutting payments to Medical doctors 10%, which should drive many of them out of the program, ending homecare for the disabled, blind & old, forcing some of those into homes, freezing enrollment in programs that had been and should be entitlements, like aid for the developmentally disabled, etc etc. Oh, and education will be cut; one of the maybe three explicit promises he ever made when campaigning was that it wouldn’t be. And all that accounts for just half of the car tax increase. Good to have those priorities straight.

General Tommy Franks says that if WMDs are ever used against America, democracy and the Constitution will be destroyed. He said this in an interview with Cigar Aficionado magazine.

I guess I knew this story was coming: “Iraqi Donkeys Suffer under U.S. Suspicion”.

On the other hand, the Indian government has set up a holiday camp for elephants.

In the small print of the latest defense appropriation act was money to develop a new nuclear weapon, designed for “bunker-busting.”

A book just out in Spain, The History They Taught Us, 1937-75, is about history books in the Franco years. Evidently Franco himself was a “Herculean hero of robust constitution,” who “came down to Earth in an iron bird to fight the dragon (of communism) with his unsheathed sword.” Jews drink the blood of Christians (well, that’s true. I find it’s quite delicious with a little chocolate syrup). The first thing Franco did was fire 50,000 teachers and replace them with Falangists.

In more recent news, Paul Bremer fired 28,000 Iraqi teachers....

Mayhem in the Middle East.

There’s been no news of Neil Bush for a while. Now there is. As expected, his divorce is stirring up all sorts of stuff. Neil admits to having had sex with women during “business” trips to Thailand and Hong Kong. He says that they just showed up at his door and presumably he just fucked them to be polite (although they may just have been asking if he needed more towels). From the deposition:

Lawyer: Mr. Bush, you have to admit it's a pretty remarkable thing for a man just to go to a hotel room door and open it and have a woman standing there and have sex with her.

Bush: It was very unusual.

He denies knowing that the women were prostitutes, or paying them. Also, he’s getting $2m from a Chinese semiconductor firm--a field about which he knows nothing--in association with the son of Jiang Zemin. Haven’t heard more about the story a few weeks ago that the president of Taiwan paid $1m to meet Neil.

A subtle hint in Mosul

The Post says that a good chunk of the money allocated for “homeland security” was spent on anything but that, in part because there are no particular standards for how locals spend the windfall, and in part because it was designed as pork, with money not going to likely terrorism targets, but based on population (i.e., everyone gets something for their district).

The Israeli government has been trying to label Europe anti-semitic lately. Sharon says, in an interview that’s rather badly timed considering that he’s currently hosting the leader of Italy’s post-fascist party, that the problem is an “ever stronger Muslim presence in Europe.” When it was suggested to him that he tends to label legitimate criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic, he said that “These days to conduct an anti-Semite policy is not a popular thing, so the anti-Semites bundle their policies in with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” And criticizing his use of excessive force would be to deprive Israel of the right of self-defense, which is a danger to Jews.

At the risk of being labeled an anti-Semite: Ariel Sharon is a prick.

Shevardnadze is out. “I realised that what is happening may end with spilled blood if I use my rights.” Patrick Cockburn’s excellent story says that Georgia had collapsed into poverty, with many parts of it having essentially seceded. Which explains why the US took the position it did: Shevvy wasn’t able to keep his country stable enough for our pipeline purposes. The US has already recognized the new government, which means I may have to rethink considering the ouster a good thing. Other link.

Croat nationalists have won that country’s parliamentary elections (Later: or possibly not an outright victory). Nationalism has also significantly increased in the last Bosnian elections, and in the Serb presidential elections (which were invalidated by low turnout). Fortunately, nationalism in the Balkans usually just involves singing folksongs.

Two US soldiers were killed by guerillas in Mosul. Immediately, a crowd went through their pockets, smashed their bodies and their car with concrete blocks, stabbed them, slit their throats, and generally, ya know, welcomed them as liberators, just like Dick Cheney promised.

That night, they tried some things they had never done before

According to the Independent, when Bush met families of dead British soldiers, a three-year old told him “My daddy is up in heaven.” I have no idea how the families were chosen, but to Britain’s credit, one were of a soldier killed by friendly fire.

Congress passed a Medicare bill, and may pass an energy bill, with provisions that could not be passed in a functioning representative democracy: the MTBE immunity, the ban on bargaining to reduce drug costs. On the other hand, there’s ethanol, which takes more energy to produce than it gives off, which is representative democracy at its worst. And honestly, when you first heard about the “donut hole” in the drugs benefit, months ago, did you imagine it would still be in the final bill? They managed to win the vote by the now familiar Republican principle that if the other side wins, it doesn’t count. In this case, they simply kept the vote open for 3 hours while they twisted arms (no vote in the House has ever gone over 90 minutes before, 15 is standard), and members of the executive branch breached protocol by going onto the floor to break legs. They don’t get to bitch about D’s filibustering when they have so little respect for the rules themselves. Also, and the Post reporter should be lynched for writing this without more detail: “In the end, they switched two of the conservatives by telling them of a Democratic legislative plot that may have been either fictional or real.” Oh, ok, another Post article says the rumor is that Nancy Pelosi would revive a D. version via a discharge petition. Clear as mud.

Incidentally, every analysis of the Medicare bill fails to factor premiums in when describing the benefits. For example, rather than having 75% of drug costs after the deductible paid, the “benefit” ranges from being something like $420 worse off than with no coverage, to a maximum of 50%.

Means-testing is fairly minor, but it’s a terrible principle to introduce, and it will worsen over time.

Jimmy Carter has written a novel. With what for Jimmy Carter passes as a sex scene, presented here in its entirety: “That night, they tried some things they had never done before.”

Gee, I like strawberries, but I don’t like skin cancer...like strawberries, cancer not so much. What to do, what to do.

Georgia (the commie one) is going pear-shaped. Shevardnadze tried to inaugurate a parliament based on the seriously fraudulent elections held a few weeks ago. He was just chased out of parliament by peasants with pitchforks, and may come back with thugs on loan from a warlord or, hopefully, retreat to his new mansion in Germany, forever. Russia looks like staying out, ditto the US, despite or perhaps because our precious precious pipeline goes through Georgia.