Putting our troops in greater danger

Wonkette makes the point that while Rove said Durbin’s dastardly expressions of outrage about Gitmo torture were “putting our troops in greater danger” because they were broadcast on Al Jazeera, the RNC has released an ad (text and ad here) on the internet featuring those very words. And a clip from Jon Stewart. Is it copyright infringement or did Comedy Central allow its use by the Repugs? Someone should make a phone call, check that out (hint hint).

The idea that what's happening over there is a quagmire is so fundamentally inconsistent with the facts

The Republican National Committee is inviting e-signatures to a birthday card for George Bush. You can even add your own special message.

And this week’s award for crappiest attempt to find a silver lining goes to the Independent for this headline: “Jerusalem Gay Pride March Banned as Religions Show Rare Unity.”

Following today’s Supreme Court ruling that local governments can seize property for the purposes of economic development and purely private profit, I’m sure we will see many Wal-Marts condemned and the land turned over to mom & pop stores.

Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee today that Iraq was not, in fact, a quagmire. Secretly he breathed a sigh of relief that no one had asked if it was quicksand.

Rummy added, “Those who say we are losing this war are wrong. We are not.” Well sure, didn’t they declare “mission accomplished” more than two years ago and that “major hostilities” were over? So there’s patently no war for us to be losing.

Actually, the part of those hearings that should have gotten the headlines, but didn’t, is Gen. Abizaid’s admission that the insurgency is no weaker than it was six months ago.

Not using food as a diplomatic weapon

The US will deliver food aid to North Korea, denying vehemently that they would ever use such aid to pressure NK into rejoining talks on its nuclear program. Scotty McClellan says Bush doesn’t “believe food should be used as a diplomatic weapon.” Isn’t that big of him? Our planes will therefore commence dropping 50-ton blocks of Rice Krispy treats on Pyongyang.

The problem with the carrot & stick approach to starving North Korea is that while they appreciate a good carrot as much as the next guy, they’re pretty happy to eat the stick too.


“FOOD — but not as a diplomatic weapon — FIGHT!”

The C student goes on a field trip

Entertainment is again to be found in the London Review of Books personals section:

Nihilist seeks nothing.

I’ll see you at the LRB singles night. I’ll be the one breathing heavily and stroking my thighs by the ‘art’ books. Asthmatic, varicosed F (93) seeks M to 30 with enough puff in him to push me uphill to the post-office. This is not a euphemism. Box no. 12/08

F 36, would like to meet LRB-reading M to 40 who plays darts professionally. Box no. 12/10

Male LRB readers. Drawing little faces on your thumbs, getting them to order meals, then shouting at them for not being able to pay is no way to win a woman. You know who you are. Men to 40 with working credit cards, reply to once bitten, twice bitten, three strikes and you’re all out F, 35. Box no. 12/12

The only item you’ll find in my fridge is soup. Forty litres of the stuff. Beat that. M. 46. Box no. 12/13

M, 34, would like to meet F to 30 able to scientifically prove the validity of the ten-second rule concerning dropped food. Box no. 12/14

[More of my LRB favorites here.]


Bush visited a nuclear nukyula power plant today, pushing for more nuke plans to be built. He dragged along his secretary of energy, Samuel Bodman, and made fun of the fact that Bodman has a doctorate but works for a C student. Then he said that “advances in sciences and engineering and plant design” — he didn’t say if those advances were made by PhD’s or C students — have made nuclear plants far safer” than in the 1970s, utilizing, as they do, nerf plutonium, so there was nothing to fear (although he did still wear a helmet to protect himself from any falling atoms).




They told me to keep my hands in my pockets when I’m in the control room, but I don’t gotta, I’m the preznit, see?


Fine words in support of science and technology, but when the Secret Service agent’s walky-talky went off, Bush thought it was the voice of God speaking to him. This happens at least twice a day.

Where are the girls?

Bill Frist gives a speech about AIDS. He’s against it. “Without a doubt, AIDS is the greatest moral, social and humanitarian challenge we face.” Hey Bill, does HIV spread through crocodile tears?

WaPo headline: “Mideast Summit Ends in Acrimony.” Well color me shocked. It gets even more amazing: “Israeli officials said Sharon spoke angrily at times during the talks.” And he’s usually so easy-going, placid, one might even say devil-may-care. “Just minutes before the meeting, the Israeli air force fired a missile into the northern Gaza Strip”. Sort of like that song: If I’d known you were coming, I’d have baked a cake and fired a missile into the northern Gaza Strip.

Alberto Gonzales wants new minimum sentencing requirements, in which judges retained discretion — but only to increase sentences. He said, “We risk a return to the pre-guidelines era, when defendants were encouraged to play the odds in our criminal justice system, betting that the luck of the draw . . . might result in a lighter sentence.” So the purpose of sentencing guidelines is to intimidate people into guilty pleas?

WaPo sub-headline: “U.S. Forces Surprised By Taliban’s Resilience In Remote Afghanistan.” Yes, Americans, in every freaking war, are always surprised when the other side actually fight back. The article is about an infantry battalion arriving in a small remote Afghan town, making nice with the natives, or rather ordering the natives to line up while the Americans gave a little performance of niceness for their edification. That battalion doctor handed out painkillers, the commander gave stuffed animals and pencils to the children

“Where are the girls?” Stammer asked, as a throng of little boys pressed around him. “I want to make sure the girls get these, too.”

Yeah, a well-armed American comes to a village and wants to know where the girls are; I’m sure that went over real well. An elder told them, “You guys are very nice. But you only come around once in a while. The Taliban will come here as soon as you are gone.” As Daniel Ellsberg says, it’s not Vietnam: it’s a dry heat.

Dick Durbin abjectly apologizes for being outraged about the torture of prisoners in Guantanamo, or something. “More than most people, a senator lives by his words,” he said; then he ate his, and opened wide to show that they were all gone. Let the healing begin.

Special good news edition: forces of evil defeated by cultural imperialists, ketchup and a few lions

The cultural imperialists defeat Japanese attempts to get the International Whaling Commission to reverse the ban on commercial whaling.

The class wars continue in England, and the working class takes a scalp. The British newspapers have been fascinated for days by a story about a lawyer who tried to get a secretary who had spilled ketchup on him to pay for his dry-cleaning. His email and her reply, “I must apologise for not getting back to you straight away but due to my mother’s sudden illness, death and funeral I have had more pressing issues that your £4. ...” have been making the email rounds. Today the lawyer resigned.

In Ethiopia three lions, going all Nicholas Kristof, drive off the kidnappers of a 12-year old girl who had been beating her in an attempt to coerce her into marriage. The lions stood guard until the police arrived. I’ve read several versions of this story, and none give the sex of the lions. They do say that 70% or more of Ethiopian marriages begin with an abduction.

The fear of free choices can no longer justify the denial of liberty

5 American soldiers who until recently guarded Saddam Hussein have given an interview with GQ (which is pretty funny considering what Saddam was wearing the last time we saw his picture). Saddam evidently thinks Reagan was a good president. Why does he hate America? Also, he can eat a family-sized bag of Doritos in a Clintonesque ten minutes.

Condi Rice tells the Egyptian government, “the fear of free choices can no longer justify the denial of liberty.” So when exactly did the fear of free choices justify the denial of liberty?

(Update: and Billmon finds this in the Wall St Journal: “Rice, in Egypt, said that the U.S. is no longer willing to tolerate repressive regimes to bolster regional stability. She flew next to Saudi Arabia.”)

BUT IS IT ART?: a bar of soap, supposedly manufactured from fat liposuctioned from Silvio Berlusconi, has been sold to an art collector for $18,000.

In the run-up to the G8 summit, George Monbiot takes on Bono and Geldof.

Take their response to the debt-relief package for the world’s poorest countries that the G7 finance ministers announced 10 days ago. Anyone with a grasp of development politics who had read and understood the ministers’ statement could see that the conditions it contains - enforced liberalisation and privatisation - are as onerous as the debts it relieves. But Bob Geldof praised it as "a victory for the millions of people in the campaigns around the world" ... The problem is that in doing so they turn the political campaign developed by the global justice movement into a philanthropic one. They urge the G8 leaders to do more to help the poor. But they say nothing about ceasing to do harm. ... Listen to these men - Bush, Blair and their two bards - and you could forget that the rich nations had played any role in Africa’s accumulation of debt, or accumulation of weapons, or loss of resources, or collapse in public services, or concentration of wealth and power by unaccountable leaders. Listen to them and you would imagine that the G8 was conceived as a project to help the world’s poor.

And I obviously, any time there’s a death, I grieve

With the polls showing a marked decline in American support for the war in Iraq, the Bushies fanned out to the talk shows to utter complete and utter gibberish. Here’s Condi Rice on Fox: “it is a generational commitment to Iraq. But it is not a generational commitment in military terms; it is a commitment of our support to them, our political support and an understanding that democracy takes time.” As Tim Dunlop points out, “This is typical of the could-mean-anything drivel that is characteristic of modern politics”; it’s not clear what “it” refers to, or even whether generational means “lasting one generation” or “lasting across the generations.” Tim wonders how many military bases this commitment would require; I’d ask what is meant by “political support.” The bit about understanding that democracy takes time is all too clear.

Bush, avoiding answering a reporter who asked whether he agreed with Cheney that the Iraqi resistance is in its last throes, said today about the American soldiers there, “and I obviously, any time there’s a death, I grieve.” So that’s what, one thousand, seven hundred and twenty-three times he’s grieved? Does he go through all five stages of grieving each time? Really, it can’t be that long a period of mourning, probably about the same length of time as a fart.

Speaking of mournful farts, Newt Gingrich, who once appointed a House historian who supported equal time for the views of Nazis in educational programs about the Holocaust, has written a letter to members of the Senate calling Dick Durbin “despicable” and calling for a vote of censure “on record,” by the same Senate that failed to have a voice vote on the apology for lynching last week, against Durbin for daring to mention Guantanamo in the same breath as gulags and concentration camps. Gingrich falsely claims that he “equates the terrorist detainees at Guantanamo with the millions of innocent men, women, and children exterminated by the order of evil dictators.” Gingrich — Newton Leroy Gingrich, mind you — says that Durbin impairs the dignity of the Senate — the Senate, mind you.

Former Speaker Gingrich

If it were true, Porter Goss would be the only member of the Bush administration with an “excellent idea”

Joseph Biden will run for president, provided he thinks he has “a clear shot at winning the nomination by this November or December,” if it’s “a real possibility.” I feel so inspired by that rousing clarion cry, don’t you?

CIA head Porter Goss says the failure to capture Osama bin Laden is from “our sense of international obligation, fair play,” and certainly not from massive incompetence. Goss told Time he has an “excellent idea” where bin Laden is, but can’t just walk up to him on the street, because they haven’t been formally introduced.

So after decades of Israel destroying economic infrastructure in Gaza, seizing land and water, imposing curfews and travel bans that kept Gazans from their jobs, and just generally keeping them impoverished and miserable, the houses in the Jewish settlements will be destroyed because they’re too up-scale for Gazan Palestinians, who’d really be happier living in a nice shanty town, much better use of the space really. Given that Gaza has just about the highest population density in the world, there may be some validity to that logic, but what an insulting logic it is. And if that weren’t insulting enough, the Israelis, not wanting to hang around and get shot at while all the rubble is being cleared, will leave that work for the Palestinians who won’t be able to live in the nice homes. (Eli at Left I, whose post I hadn’t seen — speed it up, Bloglines! — makes these points and more)

Condi Rice, who had some hand in brokering this arrangement, did not visit Gaza before going on to Egypt, where she tried to part the Red Sea.

Alert to potatoes

Japan claims that attempts to ban whaling are “cultural imperialism.” You know, I can live with that.

Japan has been bribing poor nations, some of them actually land-locked, to join the International Whaling Commission and vote with them, so they may well win this year’s vote.

The British Potato Council objects to the term “couch potato.” It is planning demonstrations outside the Oxford University Press in an attempt to remove the term from the OED and replace it with “couch slouch.” Sadly, I could find no mention of this on the council’s website, which features a constantly changing picture of the many uses to which one put a potato, not even on its press releases page, which chronicled its releases to a breathless world of such news as “Schools Celebrate Bumper New Potato Crop” and “National Chip Week kept consumers alert to potatoes.”

(Update: the Virtual Stoa has a picture of the protest)

Suspended

Favorite NYT correction, from Saturday’s paper:

Because of a telephone transmission error, a front-page article yesterday about Walt Disney’s plans to serve shark’s fin soup at its theme park in Hong Kong misstated the species of another Asian culinary delicacy, which had been seized by the authorities. It was pangolins, a type of anteater, not penguins.

Favorite headline, from the Sindy: “US Preacher Suspended Over Lesbian Wedding.” Probably by wires, like Mary Martin in Peter Pan, swooping back and forth.

Defensive democracy

In Spain, conservatives, Catholics, and conservative Catholics have all taken to the streets to protest the impending legalization of gay marriage, chanting, “What do we expect? The Spanish Inquisition! When do we expect it? Now!”

Just this past week, Condi Rice and other Bushies were criticizing the Iranian electoral process because so many candidates were not allowed to run. Now Rice is in Israel, talking with Israeli officials about demanding that Hamas candidates not be allowed to stand for election to the Palestinian Legislative Council. The Israeli justice minister says such a ban would be “defensive democracy.”

These articles were listed consecutively in the Sunday Times (London)’s world news page:

Bush Wounded by Anger over War

DiCaprio Wounded in Bottle Attack at Party

Lot of wounding going on. Who do you feel less sorry for?

At a DOD briefing Thursday (Left I points out), Gen. James Conway, asked what the measure of success is in Iraq and when American troops can get the hell out, said, “You know, the actual mission, I suppose, is classified, but I can paraphrase it to say that a safe and secure Iraq that we are able to turn back over to the Iraqis.” Classified? Classified?!?! Asked how many attacks a day would the present number have to be reduced to in order for Iraq to be accounted “safe and secure,” Conway said, “I think we’ll know it when we see it.” That’s what Potter Stewart said about pornography.

All innocent human life is precious

The Taliban have captured the district chief and district police chief for Miana Shien, as well as other officials. Fortunately, the Taliban promise a fair trial. “If they are found guilty they’ll be executed. If not they will be released.” So that should turn out ok then. Maybe they could get Michael Jackson’s lawyer.

The Pentagon reports that in its latest offensive in Iraq, Operation Spear, in which, it turns out, no actual spears were used, “Some 50 rebels have been killed and another 100 captured.” Now, Left I may be sceptical, but I salute the military for its commitment to round numbers in an otherwise messy, confusing war. Three ten cheers for them!

Jeb Bush, who just ordered an investigation, 15 years late, of whether Terri Schiavo’s husband called 911 a few minutes late, got out his crayons and wrote a letter to the NYT in which he used the word “life” as many times as he could, including in this sentence: “All innocent human life is precious, and government has a duty to protect the weak, the disabled and the vulnerable.” But enough about your relatives, Jeb. For someone who starts off accusing the Times of “grotesque and chilling disrespect for the sanctity of life” (there’s that word again), you’ll notice the qualifier: “innocent” human life is precious, the rest we put in the electric chair. The Miami Herald (registration/BugMeNot) has this cringe-inducing headline: “We’d Do it All Again, Republicans Say.” Scotty McClellan says that Shrub would have played his part exactly the same way: “Our thoughts and prayers remain with her family and friends. The president was deeply saddened by this case.” Aw, he made his sad-monkey face?

Public relations is the most important thing in the world

In act that defines the term “adding insult to injury,” Halliburton is given a $30m contract to build a permanent prison at Guantanamo Bay. (Update: the LA Times calls it an “improved prison.” I doubt the detainees will see a prison intended to hold them permanently as an improvement.) It may just be an elaborate scheme to see how many elements of scandal you can add together, Lincoln-log style (Gulags of our time + Tea Pot Dome + ...), without attracting significant media attention because it lacks a missing white woman.

To celebrate the belated addition of comments to this blog, I invite you to post mottoes for Haliburton to use in promoting this fine venture. For example, “Building the Gulags of Tomorrow... Today!”

Krugman’s column on Star-Wars-Action-Figure-Gate Coingate contains a detail that jumped out, because it shows how thoroughly the system can be gamed if you drop enough coin (sorry) in the right slots: “[Tom] Noe’s contributions ranged so widely that five of the state’s seven Supreme Court justices had to recuse themselves from cases associated with the scandal.”

Pakistan’s Gen. Musharaf admits, hell, practically brags, that it was he who imposed the travel ban on Mukhtar Mai, the woman who was ordered by a village council to be raped because of something her brother did. Musharaf said she was going to “bad-mouth Pakistan” in the US. He did not of course attribute agency to Mai, but blamed Western NGOs, which he said are “as bad as the Islamic extremists.” “Public relations is the most important thing in the world,” he added.



And accessorizing. That’s pretty important too.

A single-day event

Condi Rice, on Egyptian elections, June 2005: “Democracy isn’t a single-day event.”

George Bush, on American elections, January 2005: “We had an accountability moment, and that’s called the 2004 elections.”

The basic requirements of democracy

The Bushies have been dissing the Iranian electoral process, which Condi calls “illegitimate” and Shrub says “ignores the basic requirements of democracy.” That’s right: George Bush expressed concern for the basic requirements of democracy. With a straight (but chimp-like) face. I assume he means Fox News and the Swift Boat Veterans.

Which is not to say that there isn’t cause for grave concerns, just that those concerns would be better expressed by someone else, indeed by anyone else. Still, if they’re going to intervene ham-handedly in another country’s elections the day before they take place, they should at least make suggestions for the appropriate response, and they don’t. Should Iranians boycott the process or, as they told Afghans and Iraqis to do in elections that were no less flawed, should they show the strength of the universal desire for freedom and blah blah blah by standing in line to vote (segregated by gender, of course), and hoping for the best?

(Update: Elizabeth “No, that’s his other daughter” Cheney, the “democracy tsar shah” tells VOA’s Persian tv service that the US “believes in supporting the bravery of the people of Iran.” Again, how are the Iranian people supposed to take that?)

The US used napalm in Iraq. This isn’t really news. Two years ago, for example, I linked to this story, which said the same thing. But no one ever follows up, and they won’t this time either.

The AP reports that two college students from California were arrested in Paris, posing nude for pictures near the Arc de Triomphe. The sentence I like: “A bet was said to have been involved.”

Los valores de fe y familia

Today Bush attended the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast (whether it’s the Hispanics, the prayer or the breakfast that is “national” is unclear). He informed them “America is founded on los valores de fe y familia.” If I remember my high school Spanish and those Ricardo Montalban commercials correctly, valores is a car with rich Corinthian leather, familia probably means family, and fe means feh. He thanked the Congresscritters in attendance, including Nancy Pelosi, for “setting aside politics to come and honor the Almighty through prayer.” ‘Cuz Bush is all about separating politics from religion. He talked about the “universal call” to love your neighbor, and how “we see the love of neighbor in tens of thousands of Hispanics who serve America and the cause of freedom.” Yes, because the motto of the Marines is “We’re looking for a few good neighbors to love like we’d like to be loved ourselves.”


Oh yeah, every minute you’re in the fucking White House.


Stay away from the beans, if you know what I mean.

The condemned ate a hearty breakfast, and he didn’t say thank you either

Todd the Human Cannonball, was fired sacked by the British traveling circus he performed in because his employers wanted to send him to Brazil for safety training — and he’s afraid to fly.

Lately the defenders of Guantanamo, whose names will someday be remembered with the distaste now felt for the senators who filibustered federal anti-lynching legislation (which you’ll notice is always called that rather than “federal lynching legislation” to avoid people thinking that what was proposed was to legalize lynching, or perhaps to make it mandatory), have been taking a gastronomic turn, lauding the menu at the gulag of our times as proof of American munificence. Lemon fish, they say. With two types of vegetables, they say. Chicken three times a week, they say. Really, what more could these people want, for the rest of their lives? We give and we give and we give and we give, and it’s just never enough for them. I mean two fucking types of vegetable. And do they thank us for it? Not a bit of it. The ingratitude.

A lot of the bad things that could have happened have not happened

Trust George Bush to meet a defector from a dictatorship, which is normally the sort of behaviour I encourage in a president, and turn it into something ignoble and childish: “If Kim Jong Il knew I met you,” he asked Kang Chol Hwan, “don’t you think he’d hate this?”

Secretary of War Rumsfeld admits that Iraq is “statistically” no safer now than two years ago. Which is odd because the Pentagon always claims not to have those statistics.

However, he avers, “A lot of the bad things that could have happened have not happened.” Like what? Well, plague of locusts, slaying of the first-born, Martian invasion, rain of lightning bolts from an angry Thor, Iraqis throwing flowers at the American soldiers - but they’re actually triffids, a macarena revival, Godzilla stomping Fallujah flat — well, ok, that would have had about the same results.

And then there’s this variant on a favorite old Rummyism:

There are things we know we know, and that’s helpful to know you know something. There are things we know we don't know. And that's really important to know, and not think you know them, when you don’t. But the tricky ones are the ones - the unknown unknowns - the things we don’t know we don’t know. They’re the ones that can get you in a bucket of trouble.

I love how the BBC headlines that quote “Philosophy.”

Bionic Octopus has an excellent analysis of Nicholas Kristof, that explains in exquisite detail what is deeply wrong with his pith-helmeted forays into Third World dens of iniquity. Some people date the start of modern journalism to the attempt by British journo W. T. Stead in 1885 to prove that in London one could buy a virgin for £5. More recently, NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof traveled to Cambodia and bought some girls out of sexual slavery (it’s unclear whether he put them on expenses or wrote them off his taxes, but one suspects the paperwork involved was more interesting than his actual columns), and then, as BionOc puts it, “dumping her right back in the exact conditions that sent her to the brothel in the first place,” and then blaming her for moral inadequacies, for being afraid of freedom, if things don’t work out. This not only “works to obscure the real root causes and material conditions that engender prostitution” (BionOc’s words), but also, I would add, creates the illusion that complex social problems can be solved in a single moment of time, rather than by sustained attention and effort over an extended period of time. That may be just about the attention span of Westerners for Third World social problems, but it won’t accomplish much on the ground. Kristof’s assumption that he can turn these girls’ lives around by a single intervention is very much of a piece with the Bushies’ assumption that Iraq would, once that statue was torn down, be instantaneously transformed into a peaceful, harmonious, democratic, America-loving nation.

Some of you will be wondering: yes you could buy a 13-year old virginal girl (Stead had her checked out) for £5.

Democracy, freedom, demonstration, human rights, Taiwan independence....

Dick Cheney: “My own personal view of it is that those who are most urgently advocating that we shut down Guantanamo probably don’t agree with our policies anyway.” Oh, he so totally has my number.

So let me make sure I understand this: the only opinions that matter come from people who agree with you. Anyone else’s views may simply be dismissed. Dialogue and discussion are for wimps.

I know the Bushies think that way, but are they supposed to say it out loud like that?

Taking that logic one step further, Microsoft, which is “just following local laws,” is censoring blogs in China that use words like democracy, freedom, demonstration, human rights, Taiwan independence, and Netscape. Microsoft says it “is a multi-national business and as such needs to manage the reality of operating in countries around the world.” Amoral capitalist logic at its finest.

Sicilian authorities suspended a man’s driver’s license when they found out he was gay. So if you’ve ever been in Italy and wondered if they have any standards at all for driver’s licenses, now you know.