Well done, Sister Suffragette!

Somewhere I saw an article on reaction by fans to the Stars Wars movie in which one was quoted saying “I have closure now.”

Bush will be meeting Hamid Karzai Monday. When he talks about Afghanistan having an “elected government,” as he did in his weekly radio thing, remember that parliamentary elections are a couple of years late. I once had a life insurance policy, I think it came free for a year from my credit card, that included a benefit of $500 if I lost an eye and $1,000 if I lost both, which is evidently exactly twice as bad as losing one in insurance-company math. It isn’t, and neither is the election of just one branch of a government a democracy; half a democracy is no democracy.

Speaking of half a democracy, Laura Bush (R-Stepford) is in the Middle East talking about the rights of women, including voting. But not — and you can bet the omission is intentional, and that women in the Middle East will recognize it even if Western media do not — running for office, which is evidently too radical a concept for Laura to be pushing. Not that someone whose influence and visibility derive entirely from being married to a president is the poster child for women’s empowerment. Also because the former teacher and librarian is dead ignorant: Laura, stop saying that American women didn’t vote until 1920, it’s not true.

Pulpified

If you haven’t yet, read the whole NYT story about the torture and murder of prisoners in Afghanistan; it’s the details that count.

• The mentally disturbed prisoner they called “Timmy,” after the South Park character, and taught to “screech” like him, in between beatings.
• The fact that several members of the Third Platoon were “devout bodybuilders,” by which the reporter means, but does not say, they were taking steroids.
• Specialist Damien “Monster” Corsetti, who held his penis against a prisoner’s face during interrogation and threatened to rape him, by which the reporter means, but does not say, that Corsetti’s penis was erect because he gets off on this sort of thing.
• The prisoner whose autopsy showed legs so badly beaten (“pulpified”) that they looked like he’d been run over by a bus.

And on Abu Ghraib, Seymour Hersh notes a few of the questions unanswered since he first wrote about events there, including What did Bush do when he was told about them?

News International (yes, that’s Rupert Murdoch) is demanding £20,000 per photo of Saddam in his undies. Something to keep in mind if you see them on the front page of your morning paper tomorrow. Although since they were taken by members of the military and illegally leaked/sold to News International, I don’t see that NI has any property rights in the photos that anyone else needs to respect.

Ellen Goodman writes about the “rainbow coalition of monochromatic minds,” the Republicans’ strategy of using a woman (Priscilla Owen) (read Joe Conason on Owen’s ethics), and a black woman (Janice Rogers Brown), as the poster children for the poor filibustered judicial nominees (Brown’s the daughter of an Alabama sharecropper, you know). I’ve been meaning to write about the repugnant sexist assumption that the D’s will look like big meanies if they pick on a girl. Mark my words, the next nominee Frist brings up will sport spectacles, because “You wouldn’t filibuster a guy with glasses, would you?”

“Authority” is an interestingly ambiguous word. An NYT story today was headlined “Uzbek Government Restores Authority in Area of Revolt.” I was going to accuse the paper of regimeist bias, a term I just made up meaning an assumption that any government, simply by reason of being a government, is more or less legitimate. Looking up the word, I find that the bias is in the language itself, since authority is defined as “the power or right to give orders and enforce obedience.” Power and right are two very different things, and while Karimov may have the power to rule in Karasu, and Uzbekistan more generally, right and legitimacy he does not have. (You know, the indirect object/object/verb structure I just used would have looked perfectly fine any other week; this week it’s suspect because everybody keeps writing like Yoda. Everybody: stop writing like Yoda.)

Simon Hoggart of the Guardian quotes Donald Wise of the Daily Mirror as saying something that also applies to bloggers: “being a foreign correspondent was like peeing off the Grand Canyon - you assumed something had reached the bottom but couldn’t be sure.”

The Times has a cute movie story, about a scream, recorded in 1951 and used in dozens of movies since then, including every Star Wars movie and two Lord of the Rings’s (with a link to the scream).

Boxers or Briefs of Mass Destruction?

The latest Page 3 girl:



My question is, if that’s his cell door behind him, where’s the person with the camera standing?

Also, I don’t get the Sun’s pun (I assume that’s a pun, it’s always a pun).

Other pictures, not online, show him washing his own pants. No picture of him dyeing his hair.

(Update: today Bush responded to a reporter’s question about American abuse of prisoners, “I think the world ought to be -- pay attention to the contrast between a society which was run by a brutal tyrant in which there was no transparency and a society in which the whole world watches a government find the facts, lay the facts out for the citizens to see, and that punishment, when appropriate, be delivered.” Setting the bar pretty low for himself: at least we’re better than in the days of Saddam Hussein. Now we’re all transparent-like, and underwear justice is seen to be done.)

Toilets with brains

From the London Times: “Albert Marshall, the last surviving British soldier to have taken part in a cavalry charge with sword drawn, has died aged 108.

From the AP: “A ‘toilet with brains’, a high-tech lavatory to help multiple sclerosis patients and the disabled, is being developed, said researchers at the Technical University of Vienna. Cards or voice are used to activate hand-rail placement and seat adjustment.” Don’t flush any Korans down them, though, or they’ll just keep nagging about that left-hand thing.

Remarkable hubris: Rick Santorum wants to bomb Paris or something

A Russian court acquits soldiers who shot 6 Chechens to death, including a pregnant woman. They admitted doing it, but said they were under orders. The Nuremberg defense lives! They’d shot up a van at a checkpoint, killing one of the passengers. They were then given orders, which obviously had to be obeyed, to cover up the incident and, oh yeah, kill all the survivors.

Rick Santorum cleverly compares the nuclear option to the ever-popular concept of bombing Paris (I know this quote will be everywhere else. Now it’s here too):

Some are suggesting we’re trying to change the law, we’re trying to break the rules. Remarkable. Remarkable hubris. I mean, imagine, the rule has been in place for 214 years that this is the way we confirm judges. Broken by the other side two years ago, and the audacity of some members to stand up and say, how dare you break this rule. It’s the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 “I’m in Paris. How dare you invade me. how dare you bomb my city? It’s mine.” This is no more the rule of the Senate than it was the rule of the Senate before not to filibuster. It was an understanding and agreement, and it has been abused.

An old post of mine contains other jaw-droppingly awful Santorum quotes about the judiciary.

Fafblog summarizes: “Newsweek has killed over a dozen Afghans with a toilet and will do it again unless it is stopped.”

Congratulations and amen, graduates

From the AP: “MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A pregnant student who was banned from graduation at her Roman Catholic high school announced her own name and walked across the stage at the close of the program. ... The father of Cosby’s child, a senior at the school, was allowed to participate in the graduation.”

Meanwhile in Florida, a federal judge allows 4 Brevard Cty public high schools to hold graduation ceremonies in a church, and without covering up a 16-foot cross. The judge said the lawsuit had been filed too late for an alternative venue to be arranged (no story I’ve looked at say when it was filed), under the well-known legal principle that the Constitution is in force only if it’s not inconvenient. There would have been enough time to cover up the cross, but the judge said it would be “improper” to order a church to do so. Maybe if this were a religious service. By not daring interfere with the cross, the judge is admitting that a church is still a church even when hosting a secular function, thus proving that the first part of his decision was wrong.

I do not rise for party, I rise for principle.

Dana Milbank has a lovely, must-read article about the Senate fight over judicial nominations. It starts with Frist astonishingly unprepared to answer why he supported filibusters of a Clinton judicial nominee: “Mr. President, the, in response, the Paez nomination, we’ll come back and discuss it... It’s not the cloture votes, per se. It’s the partisan leadership-led use of cloture to kill, to defeat, to assassinate these nominees.” Later the R’s claimed that he’d meant character assassination (keep in mind that one of the key players is Ted Kennedy, who has a little bit of experience with both kinds of assassination) (and Frist has a little bit of experience with assassinating kitty cats). Later, Harry Reid accidentally called Dick Cheney a “great paramour” of virtue. He corrected himself to “paragon,” which doesn’t seem right either. Maybe he meant paramecium. Or parasite.

Frist claimed “I do not rise for party, I rise for principle.” (I assume that by “rise,” he does not mean “get sexually aroused”). But you’ll notice he didn’t take any chance that the D’s might let the first judge through by picking one with bipartisan support. No, he started with Priscilla Owen, an arch anti-abortionist. When a politician starts talking about principle, it’s time to clench your ass-cheeks very tightly, cuz he’s gonna try an’ fuck ya.

The Post also attributes to Ted Stevens the idea that would become the “nuclear option:” simply ruling that filibusters would no longer be permitted. The same Ted Stevens who secured for Anchorage $1.5 million for a bus stop. A single bus stop. Outside the, I believe, Anchorage Museum of the History of Snow. Oh, it’ll be a very nice bus stop. Enclosed, heated, possibly with a pool, a masseur, who knows.

I know I didn’t connect those two Ted Stevens stories, but the line between them is on the Anchorage bus line, and who wants to leave the luxurious bus stop and get on a crappy ol’ bus?

Credible

In Gaggleland, Scotty McClellan is still playing his balancing act on Uzbekistan: “Obviously, we have continued to urge restraint by all and for all to work for calm in Uzbekistan.” A reporter compared this restraint with Bush’s 2002 attack on Castro for arresting dissidents, but not killing or boiling them. Little Scotty denies that this is a double standard: “Obviously, Terry, there are different circumstances around the world. You have to deal with those different circumstances.” So that clears that up. Obviously. When a reporter started talking about the US rendering prisoners to Uz., Scotty cut him off.

He also ignored a question about whether Posada is a terrorist.

And he suggested that Newsweek reporters and editors travel the earth as penitents, apologizing one by one to every human being on the planet. It’s the very least they could do.

McClellan on the nuclear option: “I think it would have consequences for the Democratic leadership in the United States Senate if they continue to hold up progress on the important priorities for the American people. The American people elected us to get things done.” Democrats were, of course, elected by the Cuban people.

Which is practically what the Republican party does say in an email today claiming that the Democrats stole the Washington gubernatorial election in 2004.

The military is still investigating whether any Korans were flushed down any toilets. It is doing so by checking log entries and other documents; it is conducting no interviews. Because obviously (shit, now McClellan has me doing it) if you did flush a Koran, you’d enter that in the log. The only paper trail that could solve this case — and I suspect you’re all way ahead of me now — would involve soggy, shit-covered pages of the Koran. This is the time-honored Pentagon investigatorial technique: when Colin Powell investigated the My Lai massacre, he too conducted no interviews, and concluded that no massacre took place. Pentagon spokesmodel Larry DiRita says the allegation of Koran-dumping has been made many times before but never investigated because the allegations were not “credible” and the prisoners were probably lying. I’d like to know his definition of “credible.”

Space superiority is not our birthright, but it is our destiny

An Independent article by Johann Hari (behind a pay barrier so no link) finds America’s current policy towards Uzbekistan to have been set out in the report of Dick Cheney’s Secret Energy Task Force: “make energy security a priority of our trade and foreign policy.” So as long as they don’t boil dissidents in oil — our oil — they can get on with it.

From a NYT article on Bush admin plans to militarize space:

The Air Force believes “we must establish and maintain space superiority,” Gen. Lance Lord, who leads the Air Force Space Command, told Congress recently. “Simply put, it’s the American way of fighting.” ... “Space superiority is not our birthright, but it is our destiny.”

Really, I’d be making fun of those quotes now if only I could get over there being a General Lance Lord (shorter version: General Lord) in charge of an Air Force Space Command. Alliterative and phallic at the same time, what were his parents thinking, and in charge of rockets, oh it has to be a bad joke from a 1940s radio serial.

I found a picture of him, too large a file to clutter up this page with, but Lance Lord is actually a middle-aged bald guy with glasses and a more than passing resemblance to Jesse Helms. (Update: I have received an email informing me that that Air Force picture is misattributed, although whoever is pictured looks a lot like the real Lance Lord. Hope the Air Force keeps better track of its rockets than it does of its generals.)

And one of these space weapons programs is called Rods from God. And one involves bouncing lasers off giant mirrors hanging from satellites, or really high-up blimps. This is like every James Bond movie ever made.

OK, now they’re talking about a former Under Secretary of the Air Force Peter Teets. Pete Teets. Another middle-aged bald guy with glasses and a more than passing resemblance to every other middle-aged bald guy with glasses.

OK, I want everyone to stand up (extra points if you climb up on your desk) and intone in your deepest old-timey radio-announcer voice, “Space superiority is not our birthright, but it is our destiny!”

Now do it as William Shatner.

Now Elmer Fudd...

No one saw me make a bomb

According to Uzbekistan’s prosecutor-general, “Only terrorists were liquidated by government forces.” So that’s ok then.

Luis Posada Carriles gave a press conference this morning, as all fugitives from justice do. He said that after sneaking illegally into this country, he’d hidden for a while, but then realized no one was trying to catch him. I haven’t seen a full transcript, but while various reports claim in their headlines that he denied being involved in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban plane, he actually seems only to have said, “No one saw me make a bomb.” As for the wave of bombings in Cuban hotels in 1997, for which he’d previously admitted responsibility, this time he refused to say one way or another, though he did say the bombs used were “very small,” as was the Italian tourist killed, by what Posada calls a “little wound,” and then suggests that the Cubans killed the wounded Italian to make Posada look bad. He said he’d be willing to be tried by an international court for the plane bombing, if Cuba also turned over some people. I love it when the perps think they can negotiate.

And then the feds grabbed him. Just like Elian. Heh heh.

From today’s Gaggle:

Q -- but nowhere in the Constitution does it say that nominees are guaranteed an up or down vote.

MR. McCLELLAN: The Constitution said “advise and consent,” and that’s the role of the United States Senate, not “advise and block.”

Isn’t that persuasive, just like that masterpiece of the forensic arts, “It’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.”

For a moment, I was amazed at the ability of the Uzbek government to out and out deny that soldiers fired on crowds, an event seen and heard by many, many people. Then I turned back to the ongoing spectacle of Rummy Rumsfeld and Lawrence DiRita pulling their heads out of Achmad Chalabi’s ass long enough to blame Newsweek for the fact that foreigners don’t like us and strew our path with flowers. Who knew that not being in full command of the facts could lead to people coming to harm?

I think they broke me. They just overloaded my systems, and now I just don’t have enough contempt, sarcasm and outrage with which to respond to this. I thought it was bad last week when Tom DeLay accused the Democrats of having no class, but now I’m just broken. I may have to watch Teletubbies for the next few hours; if I see Bush’s face or hear his voice I’ll just have nothing left. So cold. So cold.

Hey, get that Dick Cheney who voted against the resolution calling for me to be released from prison in here, I’m gonna kick his butt.

Not exactly kid gloves

The WaPo says that the Pentagon actually has very strict rules on the handling of the Koran in Guantanamo. For example, the handler must wear gloves. Don’t know why that doesn’t reassure me.

Make it possible for people to have a political life

David Benson-Pope, a junior education minister in the New Zealand government (a job he combined with the post of minister of fisheries; small country, I guess), has had to resign after he was accused of having, in his previous job as a teacher, hitting one student in the nose, and punishing another for talking in class by stuffing a tennis ball in his mouth and taping his hands to the desk. No word on whether he ever similarly abused his authority over fish.

Someone should suggest to the Afghans that when they see something they don’t like in a newsmagazine, they should just blog about it. It’s less aerobic, but there’s also less chance of being shot. I kept expecting to see signs with hyperlinks. Anyhoo, the Pentagon has been trying to have its cake and eat it too; it’s claiming that the reports are false, but failed to respond when asked for comment by the Newsweek reporters. There’s a reason the story had only one source. The government and its employees (plus the inaccessible prisoners, of course) were the ones in possession of the facts Newsweek needed. To demand too many sources would make the DOD’s failure to comment an effective veto, rewarding stonewalling. The Pentagon continues to try to manage the debate, issuing blanket condemnations of Newsweek but refusing to send someone to appear in McNeil-Lehrer’s segment on the subject (or, probably, Nightline tonight), precisely because it wants the focus to be on Newsweek’s journalistic practices rather than Guantanamo’s interrogation practices. [Update. Well, not really an update since I hadn’t posted yet, but before writing that I hadn’t seen Josh Marshall’s similar thoughts:

“If the new standard is that every material fact reported must be attested to on the record then in the future we’ll know only a tiny fraction of what we do now about the internal workings of our government. What I see here is an effort by the White House to set an entirely different standard when it comes to reportage that in any way reflects critically on the White House.”]

The State Dept is still doing its balancing act on Uzbekistan, criticizing both sides equally, although the death toll seems to be 600-0. Here’s Richard Boucher:

On the side of the demonstrators, rioters, whatever you call them, the armed attack by civilians on the prison in Andijan and other government facilities is the kind of violence that we cannot countenance in any way and we condemn these kind of armed attacks on prison facilities and on government facilities. There is nothing that justifies acts of violence or terrorism and we’re very concerned at reports of either the release or the escape of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan members.

Who says the released prisoners were terrorists? Oh yes, the guys who torture and boil people (including some we send there)(“Dammit I brought this man here to be dry-cleaned and he’s clearly been boiled!”) and who claim all critics of their government are terrorists. Also, in a country where political prisoners (of whom there are an estimated 7,000) are treated the way they are in Uzbekistan, attacks on prisons to release them are in fact justified. Remember the Bastille!



Condi Rice stepped up criticism of Uzbekistan; it could now be described as “mild”: “We have been encouraging the Karimov government to make reforms, to make the system more open, to make it possible for people to have a political life”. A very top-down view, in which voting, organizing, free speech etc are privileges granted at the will and whim of the ruler.

No credible allegations of willful Koran desecration

Women in Kuwait will finally be allowed to vote, calloo callay, and even stand for office, although the law also requires them to abide by Islamic law, whatever that means (some Islamicists say it means not voting or standing for office).

Eli at Left I notes the differences between what Newsweek actually said in its clarification of its story about Koran-flushing in Gitmo, and how what it said is being mischaracterized (see also The Light of Reason). Scotty McClellan started bitching about Newsweek not meeting a “certain journalistic standard” by failing to retract the story completely; “I just find it puzzling,” he said. Little Scotty has not only never met any standards of truth-telling himself, but runs across the street or ducks into a doorway whenever he sees them coming down the block towards him. And as for the number of things Scotty finds puzzling...

Speaking of standards, when a Pentagon spokesmodel says that the story is “demonstrably false” and that there are “no credible allegations of willful Koran desecration,” one really has to wonder about his standards. If there are no credible allegations, have there been incredible allegations? And who evaluated their credibility? And have there been instances of non-willful Koran desecration? Answers on a separate piece of paper, and show all your work.

My assumption is that Newsweek, horrified that all these people have died because of what it reported, deliberately wrote a correction that could be mischaracterized in the way it has been.

Henry Kissinger, that arch-proponent of realpolitik, has an op-ed piece in the WaPo calling for a middle way with Bush’s unrealpolitik (shorter Kissigner: don’t get too hung up on that promoting-democracy thing). Actually, Kissinger hasn’t changed much. “Elections are not an inevitable guarantee of a democratic outcome,” he writes today. When he decided to overthrow Chile’s democratically elected government, he said, “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.”

More London Review of Books personal ads:

The placing of this advert has less to do with me wanting to find love and more to do with me being an attention whore. Reply now before I’m forced to cartwheel at the next London Review Bookshop reading. Woman, 34. Box no. 10/05

Mature gentleman (62), aged well, noble grey looks, fit and active, sound mind and unfazed by the fickle demands of modern society seeks… damn it, I have to pee again. Box no. 10/06

This ad is the final phase in my plan to conquer the earth. Man, 41, seeks puppet-like trillionaire F with vast army and intergalactic fleet, ready to hand over total control of all affairs. Must also enjoy canasta and be a non-smoking vegetarian. Box no. 10/07

[More of my LRB favorites here.]

We’ll make it rubble

A perhaps poorly phrased opening sentence in a story on the Pentagon website: “Terrorists continued to attack innocent Iraqis as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice paid a surprise visit to the country today.”

Rice evidently went in order to put pressure on Iraqis to shit out a constitution by August. Also, see if you can find the key word Ms. Subliminable is trying to get across here: “We talked about how the political process should be inclusive -- and the government is an inclusive government -- and the need for the constitutional writing process to be inclusive.”

A WaPo article about Operation Matador focuses on the American Marines’ frustrations about not finding enough Iraqi ass to kick. It quotes a major saying that if there were foreign jihadis in one village, “we’ll make it rubble.” Instead they wandered around, tore up people’s houses, stole their pillows, beat up a few of them, yelled at them in pidgin Arabic, and then went away, wondering what the hell they’d been doing there. Mission accomplished.

Craig Murray, the British ambassador to Uzbekistan fired by Blair’s government for telling the truth about human rights abuses there (they also tried to smear him as alcoholic and crazy) (in the general elections, he ran against Foreign Minister Jack Straw, and did pretty well), has a commentary in the Guardian.

Karimov is very much George Bush’s man in central Asia. There is not a senior member of the US administration who is not on record saying warm words about Karimov. There is not a single word recorded by any of them calling for free elections in Uzbekistan. ... When Jon Purnell, the US ambassador, last year attended the opening of a human rights centre in the Ferghana valley, he interrupted a local speaker criticising repression. Political points, Purnell opined, were not allowed.

I can’t wait to see if Scotty McClellan will still be urging restraint equally on the demonstrators and the government.

The long national nightmare is over

Condi Rice is visiting Iraq. Since it’s the first second [sorry, my bad; she was along for Bush's plastic turkey visit] time she’s ever been there, she feels qualified to tell the Iraqi people how well everything is going and that they should just have patience. “Iraq is emerging from a long national nightmare of tyranny into freedom,” she said.

Wonder if she knew that the phrase “long national nightmare” was first used in Gerald Ford’s inauguration speech, referring to the Nixon years? No, I really don’t: of course she didn’t know that.

She took the opportunity to give a new version, Mark XXIII I believe, of the explanation for how 9/11 required the invasion of Iraq, saying “This war came to us, not the other way around.” Mark XXIII incorporates the crusade for democracy into the argument. See, “The absence of freedom in the Middle East -- the freedom deficit -- is what produced the ideology of hatred that allowed them to fly airplanes into a building on a fine September day.” Note her awkward use of the pronoun “them,” rather than a term like hijackers, terrorists or Al Qaida; she’s hoping that if she glides quickly over that part, listeners won’t remember that none of “them” were Iraqis and that we started the War to Make the Middle East Safe for Democracy in precisely the Middle Eastern country that produced the fewest terrorists.







2 from the Sunday Times:

Error of the week

A teenager who forced open an industrial container in the New Zealand port of Ashburton was caught in an avalanche of peas that flooded through the open doors. The 17-year-old was trapped, unable to move, in a chest-high pile of peas and arrested after police used a forklift truck to free him.

Costume of the week

A protester was turned away from a government meeting in British Columbia, Canada, because he was protesting at the dumping of raw sewage by dressing up as a giant piece of faeces.

Operation Matador and other blood sports

The LA Times has an interesting account of “Operation Matador” (Next up: Operation Cockfight, Operation Bear-Baiting, Operation Dog Fight, Operation Pig-Sticking...). It suggests strongly that the operation succeeded in its objectives only to the extent that the insurgents cooperated. That is, it got under way so slowly, due to some combination of over-optimistic planning, too little manpower, and heavy lumbering armored vehicles which it took a whole day to get across the Euphrates, that anyone who wanted to slip over the border into Syria could do so; anyone who stood and was killed or captured wanted to stand and be killed or captured. Also, an intriguing sentence in the WaPo report: “Americans had come through their communities a few days ahead of the Marines, scaring foreign fighters into flight.”

The idea behind Operation Matador was that this distant part of western Iraq was the new Fallujah, a gathering point for insurgents, so there was a need, according to the colonel in charge of the operation, for “proving that they don’t have any safe havens.” Note the verb: Matador is about proving something rather than accomplishing something. The Marines went to the Ramana region to pee on it to mark their territory; the goal was psychological rather than strictly military. And the proof of this is that, while the military claims to have “neutralized this sanctuary,” they’re not actually planning to occupy the area, and are now in the process of leaving; the insurgents will be back in days. The Marines are claiming victory, but the jihadis are probably claiming the same thing, with at least as much justification.

Two things about the LAT report: 1) it claims that locals welcomed the Marines, but it’s not clear whether the reporter is “embedded” or just passing on what the military told him. (Update: the WaPo says locals talked to “a reporter” through a US military translator. That’s the sort of detail a reader needs to evaluate a source.) 2) Again, a newspaper buries a story’s punchline in the penultimate paragraph: on why Iraqi troops didn’t participate, possibly as picadors: they were on vacation that week.

American policy in Central Asia just goes from one awful extreme to another, doesn’t it? Either we’re toadying up to people-boiling dictators, or... a writer in the LA Times says the US is “helping train democratic leaders for 2006 presidential elections in Belarus”.

They came for Wal-Mart and I did not speak out, because I was not Wal-Mart; they came for Target and I did not speak out...

Flagstaff has a ballot initiative Tuesday against Wal-Mart’s proposed expansion of its local store. Wal-Mart ran an ad equating this attempt to restrict the rights of Flagstaffians to shop as they please with book-burning. Wal-Mart has had to apologize, not because the comparison was both laughable and odious, but because the particular book-burners in the photograph used in their ad (blurrily pictured here, pdf file, 200k) were Nazis in 1933 Berlin; if the book-burners had been Americans in the South, it would have been ok. According to the WaPo, other Wal-Mart ads have “included a picture of a child praying and a person with duct tape over her mouth.”

In a story about a Marine who won’t even be court-martialed for shooting two unarmed Iraqi prisoners, possibly in the back as they were kneeling, emptying his weapon, reloading, and firing 30 more rounds into their bodies, the WaPo saves the punchline for the last sentence: “Pantano continues to serve as a Marine training officer at Camp Lejeune, N.C., as he awaits a decision from Maj. Gen. Richard Huck, commander of the 2nd Marine Division in Iraq, on whether to drop charges.”

In Uzbekistan, nobody fights against women, children or the elderly

Another website not to go to for news on Uzbekistan, where the death toll is now in the hundreds: that of the American embassy there. However, you can look at the page that details American payments to the Uzbek government in 2004, including money to “focus on strengthening the institutions of civil society, supporting human rights, and addressing the problem of torture”. Yeah, how’s that going? Another $10.7m went to “security and law enforcement” or, in other words, torture. Link. Other link.

Karimov says that he didn’t gave any order to shoot, it just kinda happened, but denied that children had been killed: “In Uzbekistan, nobody fights against women, children or the elderly.” Consider yourselves reassured.

The perception of governance is important

Addendum: when McClellan called for both sides in Uzbekistan to “exercise restraint at this time,” did he mean that the demonstrators should refrain from bleeding too much on the soldiers?

For objective, up-to-the-minute coverage of all things Uzbek, don’t click here. For example:

Due to latest events, The President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov arrived in the city of Andizhan early in the morning of May 13th.

After the comprehensive study of the situation, the head of the state, gave specific instructions to corresponding organizations and government bodies.

In the evening of the same day he returned to Tashkent.

Just paints a picture, doesn’t it?

Luis Posada Carriles (previous posts) applied for asylum in the US this week, on the run from both Cuban and Venezuelan justice. Can you file those papers through your lawyer, without even making an appearance? And if not, why is he not in custody, since he did enter the country illegally. If the Department of Homeland Security won’t go looking for him, maybe we could get the Minutemen.

The US military is responding to the increased violence in Iraq by suggesting that the Iraqi interim/transitional/imaginary government might want to do something look like they’re doing something about it. Sez “one senior military officer”: “The perception of governance is important.”

Speaking of the perception of governance, was Bush upset that he wasn’t informed of the panic back at the homestead while he bicycled on obliviously? Fuck no:

The president also tried to deflect concern about being out of the loop, telling an audience yesterday, with a grin, “I strongly urge you to exercise on a regular basis.”

President Bush, followed by a Secret Service agent.