Pre-judging

AP headline, more or less: “Rehnquist Checks Into Hospital, Just to Mess with Everybody’s Head.”

The Bushies’ response to the Rove-Plame scandal is such textbook scandal control that it’s hard to see why anyone is surprised. Bush the Elder pulled the “Gee I’d love to comment about Iran-Contra and my role in it, but I can’t as long as there’s an investigation/as long as criminal proceedings are pending/until the last possible appeal has resolved” game. When all that was over, he still wouldn’t comment, because it was all ancient history. Bush Lite needs to be asked whether the standard for government service is “not actually in prison at the present time.” While Bush yesterday asked everyone not to “pre-judge” the matter, it’s been more than two years since the events in question; there’s nothing “pre” about it. Bush also needs to be pressed to promise not to use his pardon power for Rove.

Times article on torture and murders committed by the Iraqi police.

“Wrong Way” Santorum strikes again

One of the British suicide bombers played cricket, previously thought to be the perfect antidote to That Sort of Thing. Tony Blair blames Outside Agitators, and wants to deport and exclude foreign-born imams “who may incite hatred or act contrary to the public good”. I’m sure British Muslims will be thankful for his kind assistance in helping them deal with “this evil within the Muslim community.”

Interviewed by the Banned in Boston Globe, Rick Santorum refused to retract his earlier statements blaming sexual abuse by priests on the famously permissive atmosphere of... Boston. Here’s the killer quote: “If you have a world view that I’m describing [about Boston] . . . that affirms alternative views of sexuality, that can lead to a lot of people taking it the wrong way.”

Don’t do the walrus crime if you can’t do the walrus time

A Japanese gangster chopped off the finger of a man who owed him money. A doctor oversaw the ritual and then put in a claim to the national health service. He has been arrested.

The British are quite concerned, consternated, perturbed, or whatever the hell understated thing Brits do, about the fact that the people behind the London bombings were 1) not foreigners and 2) Britain’s first-ever suicide bombers. We’re not like that! they say. You can read about that in papers that also feature stories like this: “Riots raged in north Belfast last night as nationalists turned on police with blast bombs and petrol bombs after an Orange Order parade and its loyalist supporters passed a Catholic parade of shops.”

Lovely AP headline: “Alaska Native Gets 7 Years in Walrus Crime.”

They want the free world to retreat

Bush says the terrorists “want to drive America from the world. They want the free world to retreat.” That would be one strange-looking globe.

If America is driven from the world, can we fly around the universe with like a giant dome, meeting half-naked green alien chicks and teaching them about our Earth custom, kissing, and righting wrongs and stuff?

Asked about his breakfast with senators, at which both waffles and the nomination of a Supreme Court justice were discussed, he said, “Obviously, we’re in a very interesting period here; you got the end of the session coming up, then you got an August break. So I was just trying to get a sense of their view of the calendar. And I want to thank them for being forthright.” He particularly thanked Patrick Leahy for forthrightly explaining that thirty days hath September.

Incidentally, Bush answered those questions standing next to the prime minister of Singapore, whose own justice system is most famous for featuring caning (remember Michael Fay?)

Islamist extremist terrorists

George Monbiot notes a tactical switch by the Bushies on global warming: “Instead of denying that climate change is happening, it is denying that anything difficult needs to be done to prevent it.”

Like Bush after 9/11, Blair after 7/7 is strongly resisting any inquiry into the intelligence failures that allowed four bombings to occur, rejecting the very notions that anything can be learned or that any mistake might have been made. He somehow knows that without yet knowing who the bombers were, although he reckons they were “Islamist extremist terrorists” — that’s three “ist” words in a row. “All the surveillance in the world” would not have stopped the terrorists, he says. Which is funny, because all the surveillance powers in the world is precisely what he’s demanding be given to the intelligence services.

In an amazing gesture of generosity, the United States offered Cuba assistance in dealing with the damage caused by Hurricane Dennis: $50,000.

Cuba turned it down.

Bush today, on terrorists: “When they are constantly on the run they can’t plan attacks.” No, George, it’s you who can’t walk (or ride a bike) and chew gum at the same time.

Miss Condi’s rules for talking with boys

As Bionic Octopus notes, while Condi is telling China that it should talk with the elected Taiwanese government rather than with the Taiwanese opposition, the US (indeed, Rice herself) ostentatiously engaged in dialogue with the Venezuelan opposition just last month. During that Beijing press conference, Condi gave several other insights about who a superpower should converse with. For example, she also advised China to “reach out” to the Dalai Lama, “who really is of no threat to China.” So it’s ok to talk to people who are a lot weaker than you.

Oh, and also, it’s ok if they’re like really super-legitimate: asked when the US would get the hell out of Afghanistan, she replied,

The one country that said that the United States should stay in Afghanistan was Afghanistan, which I think, since Afghanistan is sovereign, since Afghanistan, in fact, has an elected president who was elected freely and fairly, then the relationship that we have with Afghanistan is with that government.

Also, “it is our understanding that the people of Afghanistan want and need the help of U.S. armed forces.” There’s something about that phrase “it is our understanding” that I find very amusing.

It’s ok to meet up with the poor, ugly, kind of smelly kid, like North Korea, just so long as you go along with your friends so he doesn’t think it’s a date or anything. The young people today evidently call this “engaging in six-party talks.” S-I-X, with an i.

Lastly, before talking with someone, you should draw up a list of pros and cons. Of Chinese-American relations, she said, “there are many extremely positive elements. I still think that this relationship has great momentum. It still has more positives than negatives.” Phew, imagine China’s relief. It thought it was getting the “just good friends” talk.

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....