I can't think of a title for this post

The man in charge of French intelligence at the time admits what we all knew, that the 1985 bombing of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbor (in which a photographer was killed) was personally authorized by François Mitterrand. He denied this at the time, but then put tremendous (and illegal) economic pressure on New Zealand to have it release the agents responsible for it from prison. France promised to keep them under house arrest, but didn’t. Then it promoted them and gave them medals. So the fact that they weren’t the rogue agents France claimed they were at the time isn’t a huge surprise.

Really, it was a big deal at the time. It would still seem a big deal if GeeDubya hadn’t raised the bar for state-sponsored evil so high.

The UN is at long last going in for some nation-building in Kosovo, with plans under way to transfer the police and judicial system to local (i.e., not Serbian) institutions, bolstering Kosovo’s de facto independence.

Speaking of places that we’ve all forgotten about, there were presidential elections in Kyrgyzstan this weekend. To recap: after blatantly fraudulent parliamentary elections in March, a popular uprising forced dictator Akayev to flee, whereupon opposition leaders did a backroom deal putting Kurmanbek Bakiev in power and retaining the fraudulently elected parliament. Now, Bakiev has been confirmed as president in an election in which he was virtually unopposed, because he bought off his chief rival. Whether he’s actually any good or not as a leader, I have no idea.

Bush caught in a riptide

So Karl Rove did not leak the name “Valerie Plame” to the press, he leaked “Joseph Wilson’s wife” to the press. That makes it all ok, I’m sure. I know Rove will never be sent to prison to learn a whole knew meaning for the word “wife,” but I can’t wait for Bush to explain why Rove still has a job.

LA Times headline: “Bush Caught in GOP Riptide Over High Court.” OK, let’s everybody take a moment and feel Bush’s pain as he tries to satisfy all the brands of right-wing crazies and evil corporate types who number themselves among his supporters.

Although everybody should take a moment to lean back and imagine Bush caught in a literal riptide.

I know I feel refreshed.

LAT on the return to government of Robert Earl, part of the Iran-Contra coverup, as chief of staff to Paul Wolfowitz’s replacement Gordon England. Iran-Contra may seem small potatoes compared to the greater evils and the larger lies perpetrated by the Bushies, but it did involve deals with terrorists, an attempt to overthrow a foreign government, and an out-of-control, unaccountable executive branch lying to Congress. To forgive the crimes committed by the likes of Elliott Abrams and Robert Earl is to display a contempt for American democracy. Pentagon spokesmodel Bryan Whitman dismisses Earl’s transgressions thus: “This was nearly two decades ago.” How time flies when you’re shredding the constitution.

Also from the LAT is this story, just one example (and by no means the most egregious one, just the one in front of me) of a contemptible genre I’ve seen too many times this week, which suggests that London’s acceptance of diversity and its tolerance for refugees, for radical political speech by Islamic clerics, and for wogs in general, are responsible for this week’s bombings. The message of these articles: London is a slut, and had it coming.

No vision and no clear policy

According to Iyad “Comical” Allawi, “the Americans have no vision and no clear policy on how to go about in Iraq.” Oh sure, now he tells us. Evidently Iraq is near civil war because Americans haven’t been building Iraqi national unity. How one country builds the national unity of another country, he doesn’t say (although almost all Iraqis are united in wanting Americans the hell out, so good job, us). As always for Allawi, national unity means building a strong military and secret police, stocked with “former” Baathists.

Capt. Leslie McCoy, commandant of Guantanamo, has been relieved of duty, and the Pentagon is eager to assure us that it’s because of “inappropriate personnel and administrative practices,” whatever those might be, and certainly not for the, you know, torture and shit. Someday I’d like to find out what administrative practices the military considers to be more egregious than presiding over torture.

Crude

I’m back, but I have some catching up to do. Let’s get on with it:

Bush on climate change: “It’s easier to solve a problem when you know a lot about it.” OK honestly, I’m behind, I think I can leave an easy straight line like that up to you guys.

NYT headline: “London Bombs Seen as Crude.” Ya think?

Speaking of crude, George Bush’s response: “we will spread an ideology of hope and compassion that will overwhelm their ideology of hate.” Never have hope and compassion sounded so creepy and threatening.

A rather good op-ed piece by former Tory MP and Times parliamentary sketchwriter Matthew Parris in The Times:

“In the face of provocation a ringing declaration never to falter proceeds direct from heart to lip. But en route it may detour the brain. Simple defiance is always moving but it is not always wise.”

“terrorism is not a body of men but a cloud of sympathies. ... It is a way of thinking to which some are drawn a lot and some are drawn a bit. It is a mood. It is evanescent. It can fade. It can spread. .. You cannot arrest and charge a mood. You cannot kill its army, one by one.”

AP: “President Hamid Karzai said Friday that Osama bin Laden wasn’t in Afghanistan, saying his government has no idea of his whereabouts.” Gee, there’s some sort of contradiction in there somewhere, I just can’t put my finger on it...

A spokesmodel for the Iraqi regime, while admitting having no idea who was responsible for the London bombings, still claims they are “from the same network” as insurgents in Iraq. Opportunistic prick. In the apartheid years, every time there was an act of terrorism anywhere in the world, the South African government would issue these oily condolences, suggesting that they too were beset by terrorists and deserved sympathy and understanding.

And Iraqi president (I would put that in quotes, but honestly, four years of doing that with Bush have air-quoted me out) Talabani wrote to Blair that “Terrorism has become an international plague that does not discriminate between races, people or religions.” Yes it does. The bomb doesn’t discriminate, but London rather than, say, Toronto, was chosen for a reason. Plague as a metaphor is singularly unhelpful in either understanding terrorism or formulating a response to it. In fact, it is deliberately unhelpful. People like Talabani, whose power and indeed lives are dependent on American (and British) protection, encourage Americans not to understand or try to understand the people they are fighting.

Israel has refused to extradite to Poland a Jewish man accused of genocide for his role as commandant of a communist-run camp for Germans in 1945, in which thousands were starved and beaten to death. Israel says he is to be forgiven because many of his family members had been killed by the Germans.

Light blogging, having phone troubles, 30 minute limit here at the public library, like anyone could survive with only 30 minutes of online time a day.

Looking at Blair's statement, there are problems. "We know that these people act in the name of Islam but we also know that the vast and overwhelming majority of Muslims here and abroad are decent and law-abiding people who abhor those who do this every bit as much as we do." Surely he meant to say they claim to act in the name of Islam. But the distinction he makes between "majority of Muslims" and "name of Islam" suggests that Muslims are, or can be, ok, that the real problem is with Islam. Also "as much as we do" suggests that Muslims are not "we."

He goes on, "When they seek to change our country or our way of life by these methods, we will not be changed," before promising the "most intense police and security service action to make sure we bring those responsible to justice." Police scrutiny of minority religious communities, spying, dragnets, mass arrests? No, that's not a change. Ask the Northern Irish.

More when I can.

Uplifting

Bush tells USA Today that when his Supreme Court nominee is being confirmed, “I hope the language and tone of the debate is one that is uplifting.” Yeah, right, let’s do the uplifting thing.

Speaking of uplifting rhetoric, in Britain a newly elected MP, Jamie Reed, gave his maiden speech on the subject of the proposed bill to outlaw the insulting of religion. Mr. Reed was in favor of it because “As the first Jedi Member of this place, I look forward to the protection under the law that will be provided to me by the Bill.” No one’s entirely sure how serious he was.

Bionic Octopus passed along this story about teachers in Thailand being given permission to carry guns, but being unusually busy today I sub-contracted my snarking to someone in the educational field who wishes to remain anonymous (that’s right, isn’t it Kevin? You wish to remain anonymous?). His responses:

1. The same policy was considered here, but authorities decided that, if the occasion arises, the teacher could always borrow one of the students’ guns.
2. Clearly, the problem is an insufficient amount of prayer in the schools.
3. This is part of Thailand's "No classroom left unarmed" policy.
4. If nothing else, this will cut down on spitballs.

Electric underpants

A, ahem, contretemps has erupted at the G8 summit, with Jacques Chirac saying of the British, “You cannot trust people who have such bad cuisine. It is the country with the worst food after Finland” and “The only thing that they have ever done for European agriculture is mad cow disease.”


George suddenly realizes he forgot to change out of his lounging-around-the-Oval-Office clothes before he went out in public. (Picture via Digby)

Favorite headline of the day, from the Guardian: “Man Used Electric Underpants ‘To Fake Heart Attack.’”

In rejecting any emissions standards at all, Bush has been explaining that global warming can be overcome entirely through technological advances, which the United States will be delighted to sell the world. Because nothing says capitalism like first getting rich creating a problem, and then getting rich again trying to fix the problem you created.

Bush has a similar approach to African poverty, as George Monbiot explains in the Guardian. Under the“African Growth and Opportunity Act,” African countries would only get American help if they fully open their markets to American multinational corporations, in return for which they get limited access to the American market, limited, that is, to the shit sectors the multinationals don’t want:

Clothing factories in Africa will be allowed to sell their products to the US as long as they use “fabrics wholly formed and cut in the United States” or if they avoid direct competition with US products. The act, treading carefully around the toes of US manufacturing interests, is comically specific. Garments containing elastic strips, for example, are eligible only if the elastic is “less than 1 inch in width and used in the production of brassieres”. Even so, African countries’ preferential treatment will be terminated if it results in “a surge in imports”.

Iraq has reached the apex of freedom and liberty: Coca Cola has returned.

Promoting radicalism

At the G8 conference, Bush says that if Europe would scrap its agricultural subsidies, he would do the same. “Let’s join hands as wealthy industrialised nations and say to the world, we are going to get rid of all our agricultural subsidies together.” Not that there’s any chance of the EU taking him up on it, but why is he making promises about things he has no power over and couldn’t possibly get through Congress?

The American ambassador to Venezuela, William Brownfield, went on Venezuelan tv to criticize the government for its lack of cooperation with the US on terrorism and drugs. The AP story reporting this does not say if Brownfield was asked when the US is going to extradite Luis Posada Carriles.

Also attacking Venezuela this weekend was Donald Rumsfeld, who penned an editorial for the Knight-Ridder chain in support of CAFTA, as necessary to keep Central America from going communist, or something. “Our neighbors do not live in a vacuum, and they are facing many pressures to turn away from a pro-American stance. Cuba and Venezuela -- no friends to the United States -- are promoting radicalism and attempting to subvert the democratic governments in the region.” Of course he offers no proof of this, but then what are his definitions of “promoting” and “radicalism” anyway? The fact that he uses the phrase “promoting radicalism” as if it were a heinous criminal act is a dead giveaway, if one were needed, that his real problem with Cuba and Venezuela is political.

Sandra Day O’Connor, Alberto Gonzales and the Hard, Hard Right

Not for the first time, Bionic Octopus has come to the same opinions on a subject as I have and posted them first. On the possible forthcoming nomination of Alberto “this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions” Gonzales to the Supreme Court (and Bush really wants to appoint a Hispanic to the court, but I doubt it’s Speedy’s time quite yet; maybe Rehnquist’s replacement or the one after that), the D’s are beginning to engage in “pre-cave ground preparation,” pointing out how Bush is under such pressure from his right (!) to appoint someone even more paleo-reactionary, so we should just settle for Gonzales. BionOc thinks D’s have fallen prey to shrewder R negotiating tactics, that the R’s are also playing up the supposed extreme right-wing opposition to Gonzales in order to Mau Mau the D’s into letting him slide through without filibustering. Chuck Schumer is even quoted praising Bush for his fortitude in standing up to the “hard, hard right.” BionOc suggests Schumer and the Dithering Dems want to be able to portray this as a victory, but why? Is the charge of being “obstructive” really so hurtful to them when the things they’re obstructing are so horrible? Do they really think that being on the losing side is the same as being a loser? If the D’s had real principles to stand up for, an honorable defeat in defense of those principles would be preferable to spinning a disaster for constitutional rights as some sort of half-assed victory.

That the D’s would fold instantly in the face of a Gonzales nomination is predictable from the fact that they did just that less than six months ago. I’ve been re-reading my posts from that period and getting pissed off all over again. This is me in February:

A while back I said that I wanted the Gonzalez nomination to become an up-or-down vote on torture, because I really am curious how such a vote would go, how badly damaged the moral compass of this countries’ elected representatives had become. I half-way got my wish: the D’s have proclaimed this a vote on torture, but say that they intend to confine themselves to impotent squawking. This is the lead of a WaPo article by Dana Milbank: “Senate Democrats angrily denounced White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales yesterday as an advocate of prisoner torture but said they would not block his confirmation as attorney general.” Tells you everything you need to know about the D’s.

And January:

I wish the D’s would stop praising Gonzales’s “rags-to-riches” story. Patrick Leahy: “The road you traveled... is a tribute to you and your family.” That road was paved over dead bodies in Texas and broken ones in Guantanamo; the toll on that road was too damned high.

And later in Jan.:

In, pathetically, the boldest Democratic move yet on Alberto Gonzales, Ted Kennedy says he is “leaning against” voting to confirm him. But if you consider support for torture to be an absolute disqualification for the job of attorney general, and funnily enough I do, you don’t “lean” because there is nothing left to consider. You do not “lean” on issues of principle.

A NYT Week in Review article delineating the flavors of judicial conservatism (“Constitution in Exile Conservatives” is a new one to me) (and they left out a term found in the main section article, used by a “senior administration official” which would have to mean Card or Rove: “true constructionist,” which I take to be an even more arrogant formulation for “strict constructionist”), a picture is captioned “Sandra Day O’Connor wasn’t everything conservatives had hoped.” Yeah, a man. Seriously, it’s hard to believe how ground-breaking her nomination really did seem to be in 1981. I remember how thrilled even radical Berkeley women were (I was visiting Berkeley when her nomination was announced) that any woman had been named. Now it’s all pretty hum ho, and Bush isn’t even under any particular pressure to name a woman to replace her, in the way that his father had to find a black man to replace Marshall. But consider this: in the last 24 years, only one other woman has been appointed or nominated. Don’t take gender equality for granted, is all I’m saying.

It’s a dry heat

The Daniel Ellsberg op-ed article I linked to below reminds me that I don’t think I ever linked to this piece by him. I was going to write something about the use by the Bushies of domino-theory rhetoric about the Middle East, but I never did, so I will now: The Bushies use domino-theory rhetoric when they talk about the Middle East.

Yes, that’s it. It’s a holiday weekend, and I’m busy.

Ellsberg said, “We can’t move toward what we should do, which is getting out as soon as we can. You can’t move in that direction, without being willing to be charged with calling for defeat and failure and weakness and cowardice. And that just rules it out for most people.”

Because 83,432 would have been crazy

From the Observer, verbatim: “A Japanese mental health counsellor broke the record for reciting pi from memory in a marathon session this weekend. Akira Haraguchi, 59, recited the number to 83,431 decimal places.” Mental health counsellor.

Observer piece on torture by Iraqi police.

BBC headline: “Putin Plans Russia Vodka Monopoly.” Yeltsin tried that, but took a more personal approach.

The number of documents being classified by the government increased 10% last year, the number being declassified fell 34%.

Must-read editorial by Daniel Ellsberg, who says the speech Bush just gave is one Ellsberg wrote for Johnson in 1965.

Printable

So the SF Chronic has this article about topless protesters against the war, and you can click for a “printable version,” but is there a link for an unprintable version? No, there is not.

The last Australian World War I veteran has died.

This just has to be a tasteless joke:

[Putin] has introduced personally to the Russian Duma a Bill that would create special Cossack security units to preserve law and order and fight terrorism.

Dignified

Sandra O’Connor out. Her resignation letter says, “I will leave it with enormous respect for the integrity of the court and its role under our constitutional structure.” Ya know, picking presidents after they’re defeated in elections, that sort of thing.

Bush calls for a “dignified process of confirmation” for her successor, followed by a dignified funeral for the Constitution as we knew it.

Obviously, his involvement raises many questions

A photograph has mysteriously emerged that purports to show the new Iranian president with one of the American hostages in 1979, although the figure in the picture doesn’t resemble Ahmadinejad as he looked at the time. Several of the hostages are also stepping forward to identify him, although it should be noted that many of the hostages were CIA, and probably none of them are especially enamored of the revolutionary government. Bush says he’d like to know if this is true, suggesting that either he’s not reading his briefing papers having Condi read his briefing papers to him, or the CIA still can’t collect basic intel (or manufacture a very credible smear campaign). “But obviously, his involvement raises many questions,” Bush said, presuming the very involvement he just admitted was in doubt.

The speaker of the Belgian parliament was scheduled to have lunch with the speaker of the Iranian parliament, but cancelled because the latter insisted that there be no alcohol.

And in other puritan news, the California prison system will ban smoking, including for the guards and death row inmates. Coincidentally, the state prison system’s health care dept has gone into receivership because of the many many unnecessary deaths of prisoners.

California prisons could take a lesson from the Bush administration’s Africa AIDS program, which just claimed to be treating 32,839 patients despite not having spent a single penny. Now that’s efficiency! So when Bush promises to double aid to Africa....

We want scarier troops

“The occupation is the problem, not the solution.” Yup.

Neither is it the solution in Haiti, where Kofi Annan wants American troops added to the UN operation already in that country protecting its thuggish coup regime. Annan evidently told Condi Rice that Haitians respect the US military, having had so many opportunities during their history to observe the Marines up close and personal. Says one UN official, anonymously, in a quote that simply cannot be improved upon, “We want scarier troops.”

Sharon is beginning to talk about the Gaza settlers the same way he talks about Palestinians. He says, for example, that “under no circumstances can we allow a lawless gang to try to take control of life in Israel.” Well, irony and self-knowledge were never Shamir’s strong suits. “We cannot let a small group of lawbreakers impose a reign of terror.” Yes, just imagine what a reign of terror in Gaza would be like... oh, wait...

Philippines President Gloria Arroyo, in trouble because of corruption scandals and having told the head of the election commission just before the 2004 elections that she wanted to win by a margin of one million votes, a conversation followed shortly by her winning re-election by a margin of one million votes, has sent her husband into exile (and away from arrest in case she gets impeached and can no longer protect him).

In his dissent in the Ten Commandments case he was on the losing side of, Scalia wrote that “nothing stands behind the court’s assertion that governmental affirmation of the society’s belief in God is unconstitutional except the court’s own say-so”. How does an abstract collective entity, society, have a “belief in God”? Such anthropomorphization is simplistic and intellectually lazy.

“Is the sacrifice worth it?” I watch Bush’s speech so you don’t have to

Bush needed to make a persuasive speech tonight, that is a speech calculated to win back the waverers, but he did not, offering rhetoric rather than argumentation. He simply does not know how to persuade. He needed to show some sign that he realized things were not going according to plan and that his policy would shift to take into account those realities, but he did not, suggesting instead that victory was inevitable. He didn’t define victory, because on the day when he finally does declare victory, Iraq will look much worse than it does today, but he suggested that as long as the US was determined to win, it would do so. He didn’t acknowledge the possibility that the US could remain determined to win but still lose through miscalculation, poor strategy, or because the task is simply too hard. Indeed, it’s hard to know if Bush privately understands that things are not going well or if he believes the things he says.

He quoted Osama bin Laden, saying that he had the same view of the situation in Iraq as Bush does. Hey, weren’t you going to catch that guy? Wasn’t he the one who could run but couldn’t hide? I’m just asking because it seems the height of chutzpah to link Iraq and 9/11 over and over, and then blandly quote the guy whose continued freedom is a sign of his failure to complete job #1 before moving on to Iraq.

He said several times that we need to stay in Iraq to “send a message.” If you want to send a message, use Western Union. When political leaders start thinking of military actions as ways to maintain national prestige, look strong, send a message, etc, rather than as a pragmatic business with defined objectives, you know you’re in trouble. Think LBJ. This is why he offered no plan and why, indeed, he has none. He doesn’t think it’s necessary.

It’s all abstract to him anyway. “Like most Americans, I see the images of violence and bloodshed.” “They take innocent lives to create chaos for the cameras.”

I liked the suggestion that we are in Iraq to prevent it becoming what Afghanistan was, a haven for terrorists. Well, whose fault is that? Iraq wasn’t the destination for every jihadist in the Muslim world three years ago, now was it? So now the justification for the war in Iraq is to deal with conditions created by the war in Iraq.

At least there were no hoo-ah’s, which would really have made me vomit.

Is it reigning yet?

As GeeDubya will remind us in 5 hours, today marks one year since he wrote (or possibly traced, I’m still not convinced he can read and write) “let freedom reign!” on a piece of paper, which he then put under his pillow, in the hopes that the Freedom Fairy, the little-known cousin of the Tooth Fairy, would take away the smoldering wreckage of Iraq and replace it with a Ruritarian utopia.

In the real-world Iraq, the oldest member (87) of the Iraqi parliament died today, and it was not peacefully in his bed. There were miscellaneous suicide bombings today; one American soldier died but the chief of traffic police in Kirkuk escaped (you have to wonder about their strategic planning). Today some unemployed Iraqis who had survived the often lethal process of standing in line to apply to join the police in Samawa held a demonstration because they were not then hired, and were fired on by those who had been hired. Reuters reports: “Foreign troops, apparently from British or Australian units which operate in the area of southern Iraq, observed the violence from the roof of a local authority building.”

Media Matters notes that Fox News’s website (falsely) portrayed yesterday’s Supreme Court decisions thus: “Court Rules Against Ten Commandments.” Dude, I know a loophole when I see it, and I am totally gonna go and worship a graven image.

A critical moment in a time of testing

The Supreme Court issues two contradictory rulings on the display of the Ten Commandments in (or around) public buildings. So maybe just Five Commandments then. Maybe we could vote on which ones we like best. Actually, I’d be kind of interested in seeing the results of that vote.

Tomorrow Shrub will address the nation on the subject of Iraq. Scotty McClellan says, “he will make the point that this is a critical moment in a time of testing.” Didn’t Bush always pay someone to take his tests for him?

Helen Thomas writes, “As soon as the devastating abuse of the prisoners at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib came to light, Bush should have ordered a ban on torture in all prisons under U.S. military control.” It hadn’t occurred to me before, but I think every time Bush has condemned abuse of prisoners, it’s always been past acts of abuse and torture. Forget an official ban, he hasn’t ever made a public statement telling soldiers and guards that he expects them to refrain from such acts in the future, on pain of severe punishment.

Meetings go on frequently with people

Roger Noriega, Assistant Secretary of State for Saying Stupid Things about Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, Etc., whom I last mentioned earlier this month when he blamed Chavez for the uprising in Bolivia, offering no proof at all, has accused Jean-Bertrand Aristide, deposed president of Haiti, of orchestrating violence there, offering his usual standard of iron-clad evidence: “As a longtime observer of Haiti and a longtime consumer of information about Haiti, it is abundantly clear to me . . . that Aristide and his camp are singularly responsible for most of the violence and for the concerted nature of the violence.”

(No one picked up the Miami Herald story. Hat tip to You Will Anyway.)

The LA Times reports that rather than demolishing Abu Ghraib, which Bush once said would be “a fitting symbol of Iraq’s new beginning,” we are now doing the opposite: expanding it, and building a new prison. It remains a fitting symbol, but of complete failure.

As is Rumsfeld’s admission on Fox and Meet the Press that the US has been negotiating with Sunni insurgents, although not, he says, with “the people that are out chopping people’s heads off.” Well sure, ‘cause they’re out. Maybe when they get back. Rummy added, “I would not make a big deal out of it. Meetings go on frequently with people.” No kidding.


Rummy said the war might take 12 years to win. 12 years from when? Just so I can mark it on my calendar.

But he also says the insurgents “don’t have any vision” — Rumsfeld criticizing someone for lacking vision is like Rumsfeld criticizing someone for being squat and squinty — “There’s no Ho Chi Minh, there’s no Mao, there’s no nationalistic -- this is led by Zarqawi. He’s a Jordanian and he’s doing it not against a dictatorial government, he’s doing it against an elected Iraqi government.” Funny, I thought he was “doing it” against an American occupation.

Indeed, Rumsfeld sounds at several points like the Americans are mere spectators to events in Iraq now, only mildly interested because we bet only a couple of bucks. Those contacts, which were reported as being between American officials and Sunnis, he portrayed as contacts between Sunnis and the Iraqi regime, which can do what it wants because it’s all sovereign and everything; we were only “facilitating.” And we’re not even going to defeat the insurgents: “We’re going to create an environment that the Iraqi people and the Iraqi security forces can win against that insurgency.” Whatever the fuck that means.

Elsewhere in the interview, Rumsfeld referred to “Michael Moore, or whatever his name is”.