We don’t want the smoking gun to be bellicose statements, or something

The State Dept on why it was totally necessary to practice in the skies over South Korea for bombing North Korea and stationing new weapons in SK: “When you have a country that is making the kind of bellicose statements and taking the kind of steps that they have, you have to take it seriously and you have to take steps to defend the US and its allies.” We are deploying the latest in anti-bellicose-statement technology.

The Guardian says that the US gov asked China to order North Korea to tone down its rhetoric. That’s an awful lot of work to deal with the clear and present danger posed by rhetoric.

Speaking of rhetoric, NK denounced the joint US-SK “madcap war exercises.” They’re clearly looking forward to the MASH reboot as much as I am.

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Today -100: April 4, 1913: Of artificial excitement and hysterical enthusiasm, dirigibles, and peanuts

Emmeline Pankhurst’s trial concludes. She refuses to call witnesses but does make a speech. She notes that she is pleading not guilty, despite having pointedly taken responsibility for the attempt to destroy Lloyd George’s country home, because the indictment said that she had “wickedly and maliciously” incited the act. Before the judge can stop her, she slips in a mention of an unnamed judge who was found dead in a brothel. She adds that she looks upon herself as a prisoner of war, under no moral obligation to accept her sentence, and that she plans to hunger strike and get out in time to speak at a meeting at the Albert Hall next week. The jury finds her guilty, with a recommendation for mercy, which the Dickensianly named Justice Lush ignores, sentencing her to 3 years.

The Standard (UK) says that the “artificial excitement and hysterical enthusiasm of militant meetings” causes “decent girls and married women” to “make criminals of themselves, [be] sent to jail, and go through hunger strikes and consequent degradation. It is useless to pretend that contact with the criminal law and experiences of prison can be otherwise than prejudicial to female modesty. Womanliness is a decent flower that cannot long survive the atmosphere of rowdyism which Mrs. Pankhurst has done so much to create.”

On April Fool’s, there was a French newspaper hoax about a German dirigible overflying France. Now, it’s actually happened. The Zeppelin IV lands, on the military parade grounds at Lunéville. It got lost and blown off course. Or so its crew says. After a search of the airship for spy stuff (and a nice chance for the French to do some industrial espionage of their own) and an investigation, the airship and its crew are released. 600 locals wrote their names on it as well as Vive la France and other, less printable, comments.

Headline of the Day -100: “Peanuts Start Vice Hunt.” The Illinois Senate Vice Commission investigates an incident in which some immigrant girls (nationality unstated) traveling to Chicago stopped to buy a packet of peanuts and missed their train, leading others in their group to claim they must have been forcibly removed from the train by white slavers. By the time the train reached Chicago, the story was that two men had enticed 20 girls into their grips. Hilarity ensued.

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Today -100: April 3, 1913: Of suffrage, cats & mice, colon fires, and chairs

The lower house of the Connecticut Legislature rejects women’s suffrage, 150-74.

Emmeline Pankhurst is on trial for inciting persons unknown to place an explosive in Lloyd George’s future country house. The sole evidence presented against her is her speeches at public meetings. Mrs. Pankhurst, acting as her own attorney, complains that the police reports of her speeches are inaccurate – and ungrammatical.

The British government’s Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health) Bill (aka The Cat and Mouse Bill), giving the home secretary the power to release hunger-striking prisoners without having to commute their sentence, giving them time to recover under whatever restrictions he feels like putting on them, and then putting them back in prison to resume their sentence, is debated in Parliament. Home Secretary Reginald McKenna warns MPs against “attaching too much credence to the accounts which are being given as to the terrible tortures which are endured in prison under the system of forcible feeding.” He notes that “publicity is the keynote of this [suffrage] propaganda, and as part of publicity the prisoners who have been sent to prison for committing various offences, such as window breaking, attempted arson, and other offences, have adopted the hunger strike in the hopes of enlisting the sympathy of the outside public.” So while he claims the Cat & Mouse Bill is necessary to enforce the law, he makes clear that his real goal is to prevent suffragettes gaining publicity and making the government look bad. The bill passes its first stages.

The London Times applauds the Cat and Mouse Bill: “a hunger strike on the proposed terms will lose most of its charms, since it will neither offer a chance of martyrdom, nor make a picturesque appeal to sentiment, nor evade the decreed punishment.”

Headline of the Day -100: “Panic in Colon Fire.” A movie theatre in Colon in the Panama Canal Zone.

Former President Taft now holds a chair at Yale Law School. Actually, the chair he was given at his first faculty meeting was too small to accommodate his ample bottom. Finally, they found an appropriate chair from the Midnight Club, a chair built for two people to sit in.

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Today -100: April 2, 1913: Of sieges, elevator operators, zeppelins, and aerial suicide

The Bulgarian Army claims that the capture of Adrianople was achieved at the cost of ten or eleven thousand Bulgarian casualties and 1,200 Serbians, and that the Serbians are wusses.

The Ottoman Empire agrees to the Powers’ proposed terms for a peace. Montenegro does not.

Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, after finding an elevator operator in the State Dept building well after his 8-hour day was over, changes the rule that operators must remain as long as the secretary of state is there.

A newspaper in Rheims, France, publishes a story about a German zeppelin cruising over several French forts before losing its propellers and landing near Rheims fortress. A crowd went to check it out and possibly, you know, lynch the German crew, but... April Fools! No German invasion... this time.

This may be another aeronautic first [update after reading to the end of the article: no, it’s not]: a Russian army pilot commits suicide by crashing his plane. His suicide note claims that he was the victim of many intrigues. Mysterious.

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Today -100: April 1, 1913: Of Morgans

J.P. Morgan dies, so that’s it for getting any other news out of the NYT today. He may have been worth less than $100,000,000. Loser.

Big Bill Haywood of the IWW (the Wobblies) is sentenced to six months’ hard labor for causing an unlawful assemblage, i.e., a strike meeting in Paterson, NJ. The sentence will be overturned later in the week.

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Today -100: March 31, 1913: Or pee on it

King Constantine of Greece will go to Salonika and stay there until peace is declared, in order to assert Greece’s claim to the region against Bulgaria’s. Some countries just plant a flag.

We’ve run into The Other Winston Churchill before, the American novelist who is not actually related to the British one. Woodrow Wilson is buying The Other Winston Churchill’s estate near Windsor, Vermont as a summer home.

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Scream and desperate efforts

With North Korea saying that it’s now in a state of war with South Korea, it seems like it’s time to start casting the role of Hawkeye for the MASH reboot. Suggestions in comments, please.

Actually, brainstorm...: Nathan Fillion as Hawkeye, Alan Tudyk as Trapper, Gina Torres as Hotlips, Adam Baldwin as Frank Burns, Ron Glass as Col. Potter, Jewel Staite as Radar, Sean Maher as Father Mulcahey and Summer Glau as Klinger (who has no trouble getting a Section 8)...

But I digress.

So just what is North Korea saying?

The service personnel and people of the DPRK [North Korea] have turned out as one in the sacred war for annihilating the enemy, their hearts burning with towering hatred and resentment...

Did I mention this is a statement by the Secretariat of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea?

.... at the U.S. imperialists and south Korean group of traitors going reckless in their moves to destroy the symbol of the supreme dignity of the DPRK, not content with staging war exercises against the north. ...

Terrified by the toughest measures taken by the DPRK recently, the south Korean puppet group is letting loose a spate of invectives...

Worst. Episode of the Muppet Show. Ever.

These are scream and desperate efforts of those frightened by the invincible might of the DPRK winning victory after victory with all the service personnel and people united close around the brilliant commander of Mt. Paektu [that would be Kim Il-sung, you know, the first dictator] in single mind and their high spirit to annihilate the enemies.

The puppet group seems to have lost the ability of discerning the situation being stupefied with amazement. ...

The puppet group is sadly mistaken if it thinks it can hurt even a bit the unbreakable single-minded unity and the image of the dignified DPRK in which all service personnel and people have formed a harmonious whole with their leader.

Kinky.

The DPRK’s army and people are compelled to take notice of the ever stepped-up anti-DPRK invectives by the puppet group instigated by the venomous swish of skirt of the owner of the inner room of Chongwadae.

They mean South Korean President Park Geun-hye. To be fair, I hear the swish of skirt really is quite venomous.

The group of traitors pointing their fingers at the sky will never be able to evade punishment.

Because it’s not polite to point.

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Today -100: March 30, 1913: Of riddles, dirigibles, governors overboard, segregation and more riddles

Headline of the Day -100: “Mayor Riddle Arrested.” The Riddler became the mayor of Gotham City and... Actually the mayor of Atlantic City, pinched for procuring false testimony. The prequel to Boardwalk Empire, I guess.

The German Navy plans its own fleet of aircraft, in addition to the army’s fleet of aircraft, because everyone wants their own fleet of aircraft. They plan to spend $12½ million over five years (1914-18), mostly on dirigibles.

Huerta’s forces seize the governor of Sinaloa, put him on a ship to send him for trial in Mexico City, whereupon he “falls overboard,” as was the custom.

The LAT reports an alleged plot to divide Mexico, with the northern states joining the United States.

There has been some discussion recently of “segregation” in various legislatures (California, NY, Colorado) and in the letter pages of the Times. “Segregation” here meaning forcing prostitutes into red-light districts. One such measure just failed in the Colorado Legislature. The NYT explains how it happened:

Mrs. Agnes Riddle [the first Republican woman CO state senator, elected 1911] attacked it on the ground that “fallen men should be segregated the same as fallen women.”

Representative Biles announced his willingness to insert a section providing for her suggestion.

“But there would be no men left,” objected Mrs. Riddle. [She may actually have said that there would be no men left IN THE LEGISLATURE, but I’m not sure how trustworthy my info is]

The House burst into laughter, which lasted ten minutes. Just before the roll call on the bill, Mrs. Riddle arose and said:

“Let him among you who is without sin cast the first vote.”

No one voted.

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Today -100: March 29, 1913: Shafted!

The Ohio state militia is shooting looters in drowned Dayton.

King Ferdinand of Bulgaria accepts the sword of the commander of the fortress of Adrianople. When was the last time a surrender involved a sword?

Serbs are claiming that it was their artillery and their troops that took Adrianople, but the Bulgarian commander says Serb operations were “purely demonstrative.”

NY Supreme Court Justice Henry Bischoff falls down an elevator shaft to his death. He was on his way to his chambers on the 13th floor, which just goes to show. The elevator operator seems to have panicked and started the car moving before the shaft door was closed. 83 people were killed in elevator accidents in 1912 in Manhattan alone. Bischoff’s death could have been stopped by an automatic locking device (elevator doesn’t move when doors are open), but real estate interests have thwarted proposed legislation to require them. Remember, elevators don’t kill people, people kill people.

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Today -100: March 28, 1913: It is not brute force that rules the world

Unfortunately Phrased Headline of the Day -100: “Relief Train Sent to Flood Sufferers.” Peru, Indiana survivors are experiencing outbreaks of smallpox, diphtheria, and measles. Railroad bridges are down all over Ohio and the property damage is said to exceed that of San Francisco in 1906.

The London Times reports that of 240 suffragette prisoners in 1912, 84 were released early due to hunger strikes, and 57 or so were forcibly fed.

Christabel Pankhurst responds in The Suffragette to Home Secretary McKenna’s calling suffragettes bad names: “the so-called fanatics and hysterics are the glory of the human race. It is through them that all good things come into being.” She says the ability of hunger strikers to win their release, “[t]his rending of prison walls”, “will establish for ever the truth that it is not brute force that rules the world.” Christabel will be one of the most jingoistic supporters of World War I – just saying.

Her sister Sylvia (who will be one of the most vociferous opponents of World War I), just released from prison, has an article in the same issue entitled “They Tortured Me.”

Suffragettes may or may not have burned down an empty house in Hampstead.

Although both houses of the New Jersey Legislature passed resolutions in favor of women’s suffrage, they may be void because of bad wording: giving the vote to every “male or female citizen” instead of every “male and female citizen.”

I’ve been remiss in not having mentioned the Marconi Scandal. There is a scandal. In Britain. Involving insider trading in the stock of the Marconi Company and by several members of Asquith’s cabinet, including Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George, Attorney General Rufus Isaacs, and Postmaster-General Herbert Samuel, just ahead of the announcement that it had won a large government contract. There is a parliamentary inquiry going on now. Like a lot of these political-financial scandals right up to the present (hello, John McCain), it’s basically too convoluted to really hurt anyone’s career, no matter how guilty they are. Headline of the Day -100: “Isaacs Indignant at Veiled Charges.”

Supposedly the Turks blew up Adrianople’s Grand Mosque and other religious sites before surrendering the town, “to prevent them from being profaned by impure feet.”

King Alfonso of Spain fell off his polo pony.

Mexican “President” Huerta’s brother-in-law, Enrique Zepeda, who Huerta appointed as governor of the Federal District, dragged a Maderist commander of rural guards, Gabriel Hernandez, out of prison, and had him shot dead and set on fire (Hernandez himself was known to execute prisoners), while hopped up on the marijuana (that’s what it says in the NYT). Zepeda then went to another prison, but they wouldn’t hand over anyone for him to kill, so he went out drinking, and was heard remarking that the country needed more summary executions. A bit later he was arrested in a brothel. In November he will be acquitted because of temporary insanity (i.e., the marijuana).

Obit of the Day -100: Mrs. May C. Brooke, the last surviving member of the Laura Keene Company who performed “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theatre when Lincoln was shot.

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The Supreme Court and the Skim Milk Marriage of Doom

In today’s Supreme Court discussions of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), Kennedy says that “what has always been thought to be the essence of the state Police power, which is to regulate marriage, divorce, custody.” Who exactly has always thought that?

He also talked about “questions of the rights of children,” which seems to contain an implicit acceptance of the idea that having parents with similar genitals somehow infringes those “rights of children.” At any right, I’d be curious to know what Justice Kennedy sees as the rights of children. Maybe a list.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that DOMA creates two kinds of marriage, full marriage and “then this sort of skim milk marriage.” Ginsburg doesn’t know exactly what the gays get up to in their bedrooms, but she’s pretty sure it has something to do with low-fat dairy products.

Roberts, Scalia and Alito all claimed amazement that the Obama administration was still enforcing DOMA at the same time it was claiming that it was unconstitutional (Roberts said Obama should have exercised “the courage of his convictions”), because the justices evidently don’t understand the whole “separation of powers” thing. Alito: “The President’s position in this case is that he is going to continue to enforce DOMA, engage in conduct that he believes is unconstitutional, until this Court tells him to stop.” Yes, because it’s the law of the land until the Court rules otherwise, that’s how that fucking works.

John Roberts was also baffled by how so many straight people have mysteriously come to support gay rights in the period since DOMA was enacted in 1996, repeatedly asking the lawyer how The Gayz had managed it: “I suppose the sea change has a lot to do with the political force and effectiveness of people representing, supporting your side of the case?” “You don’t doubt that the lobby supporting the enactment of same sex-marriage laws in different States is politically powerful, do you?” “As far as I can tell, political figures are falling over themselves to endorse your side of the argument.” (“Falling over themselves” is probably some kind of kinky gay thing). “Well, but you just referred to a sea change in people’s understandings and values from 1996, when DOMA was enacted, and I’m just trying to see where that comes from, if not from the political effectiveness of -- of groups on your side of the case.” The lawyer responded by talking about “a moral understanding today that gay people are no different,” but it’s like Roberts just can’t understand that people form their opinions of social issues in any other way than through the sphere of politics and politicking: “I understand that. I am just trying to see how -- where that that moral understanding came from, if not the political effectiveness of a particular group.” It’s kind of weird, like he has never in his life had any conversations with normal people. Roberts’ questions also suggest that he doesn’t understand that equality of marriage might be a matter of concern for people who are not gay.

Roberts is.... kind of weird, is what I’m saying.

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Today -100: March 27, 1913: Of Adrianople, evil and insensate follies, and drinking at dances

Weather deaths in Ohio and Indiana may be in the thousands.

Adrianople falls to the Bulgarians and Serbians after a siege of 153 days. Let the looting begin!

Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill suggests that the world take a one-year holiday from building warships, calling the naval arms race “evil and insensate folly.”

The Bull Moose Party (remember them?) is falling apart in the House of Representatives, with three Progressive Republicans refusing to support a Progressive for speaker. Evidently they plan to support Wilson’s policies while supporting the Republican Party machine at the same time. Good luck with that.

Headline of the Day -100: “Gaynor Won’t Stop Drinking at Dances.” That is, NY Mayor Gaynor’s order that all-night liquor licenses be revoked will not apply to one-night-only licenses for dance parties. I suspect the double meaning in that headline was deliberate.

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Today -100: March 26, 1913: Of great storms, citizenship, and smallpox

Storms, Dayton, Ohio under water and blah blah blah. The “Great Storm of 1913.” 400 drown in Dayton. Peru, Indiana “appeals for coffins, doctors, nurses,” not necessarily in that order.

The lower house of the Massachusetts Legislature votes in favor of women’s suffrage 144-88, but it needs 2/3, so fails.

The petition of Harriot Stanton Blatch, Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s daughter and a big-time suffragist in her own right, to have her American citizenship restored (she lost it because she married an English bloke) is rejected by a federal district court judge.

Sylvia Pankhurst is released from Holloway Prison and describes her experiences of forcible feeding in more detail than you probably want to read. When she decided she had had enough, she went on a sleep strike too, walking and walking in her cell for 28 hours.

Montenegro agrees to Austria’s demands that it let the civilians of Scutari evacuate, though with lots of grumbling about breaches of neutrality.

The Senate dining room is fumigated for smallpox (does that work?) after a former worker came down with it. Everyone in the White House, from Wilson down, is getting vaccinated.

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If liberté, egalité, fraternité doesn’t mean two French dudes boinking, I don’t know what it means

Yesterday there was a large demonstration in Paris against a proposed bill to legalize gay marriage (“mariage homo”) and adoption. The police used their batons on some of the protesters, which is not at all gay. What else wasn’t at all gay?



These people were demonstrating their love of fisting.




These girls are totally into bondage. (I’m not sure what the deal is with the French Revolutionary symbolism, the Marseillaise and those Phrygian caps.)




You know he’s totally thinking about Jean-Paul Belmondo.




Um...




Er, yeah.

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Today -100: March 25, 1913: Of Avignon Arkansas, undisclosed stationery, padlocks, and 1% solutions

Tornados kill 250 or so, mostly in Omaha and surroundings.

Arkansas no longer has two governors. When Gov. Robinson was elected to the US Senate, the president pro tem took over as acting governor; a few days later he was replaced as president pro tem but claimed that he was still governor; the new president pro tem disagreed, and for several weeks the two both kept gubernatorial offices in the State Capitol. The state supreme court has now decided in favor of the new guy, Junius Futrell.

Not only will William Wilson, the secretary of labor, not be paid until the next fiscal year begins in July, because Congress forgot to appropriate any funds to the new department, but none of the dept’s officers can be paid (those in the bureaus that were transferred to the Labor Dept’s aegis – the Immigration, Naturalization, Labor, and Children’s bureaus – are still funded) and it can’t buy, for instance, stationery. “Where [Wilson] gets the paper [he uses] has not been disclosed.”

British suffragette fun and games: “There was a curious incident at the Labour Conference in Manchester. While the Chairman was saying, ‘We desire passionately that women shall not be political outlaws,’ it was discovered that militants, to whom admission had been refused, had put padlocks on the doors of the hall.” Actually, they were not so much refused admission, as asked to sign a document promising not to heckle, demonstrate, or cause any annoyance.

Doctors’ organizations are complaining about a bill being considered by the NY Legislature to regulate doctors prescribing cocaine and make them keep records. The doctors call it an affront to their honesty and an insult to their intelligence.

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Today -100: March 24, 1913: Of duels, converts, ambassadors, and Jewish tragedians

It’s probably wrong to think of this as incredibly cool, but a performance of Carmen in Spain ended with a real sword duel on stage between the singers playing Escamillo and Don José, due to a love rivalry, with the former killing the latter. Now that’s entertainment!

Austria escalates its request to Montenegro to let the residents of Scutari evacuate before continuing military operations into a threat to go to war against Montenegro if it refuses. Oh, and all Catholics and Muslims in the Jakova region (i.e., Kosovo) who have been “converted” to Eastern Orthodox Christianity must be allowed to revert to their former faiths. Montenegro replies that it will set up a commission, with a representative from Austria and one from maybe Italy to investigate the conversions.

Wilson complains that only rich people can afford to be ambassadors and he’d prefer to be able to choose ambassadors based on, you know, ability (his choice to be ambassador to France just turned him down). They get paid $17,500 a year (members of Congress got $7,500, the president $75,000, which in real terms was WAY more than Obama gets), but have no official residences. The problem, really, is that all the rich ambassadors spend a fortune throwing banquets and balls, making the ones who can’t afford to do so look bad.

Col. Hugh L. Scott is about to be promoted, and the NYT thinks this will be seen as good news by the Indians and Moros who “have been helped by Gen. Scott [who] regard him with an affection that amounts almost to worship.” At least the ones he didn’t kill.

The story below that is about the son of an actor being arrested for stealing an automobile tire. The actor is described as a “Jewish tragedian,” which is redundant, surely?

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Today -100: March 23, 1913: Of the next war, assassinations, white persons (as commonly understood), freaks (again), and misapplied art

The Great Powers set out the terms of peace they think everyone should accept to end the Balkan War: large swathes of the Ottoman Empire ceded to the allies, including Crete, the establishment of Albania, no indemnity.

The Sunday NYT Magazine features Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on “England’s Next War.” He says there is no German menace. So that’s okay then. He talks a lot about submarine warfare and concludes that Britain needs a Channel Tunnel.

In a seriously botched story for which I can’t find any correction ever having been printed, the NYT says that the former Chinese Minister of Education, Gen. Sung, has been assassinated, but that before he died of his wounds, he received a letter saying, sorry, meant to kill the other Gen. Sung. None of that’s true. The guy who was actually assassinated, Sung Chiao-jen, was neither a general nor an education minister, but the president of the Kuomintang. He was engaged in an effort to restrict the powers of the president in favor of the parliament, which was why he was almost certainly ordered murdered by Provisional President Yuan Shikai and other members of the government. However, the assassin and his accomplices were all murdered before the investigation went anywhere.

The US District Court for D.C. rules against a half-German, half-Japanese man who claims that he is white and therefore eligible for US citizenship. The Court says, “In the abstractions of higher mathematics it may be plausibly said that half of infinity is equal to the whole of infinity; but in the case of such a concrete thing as the person of a human being it cannot be said that one who is half white and half brown or yellow is a white person, as commonly understood.”

Headline of the Day -100: “SAYS BIG GUN FIRE MADE EATON QUEER; Stepdaughter Asserts He Never Was the Same After Standing Too Near Cannon.” This was in the Trial of the Century of the Week, that of the widow of retired Rear Admiral Joseph Eaton, who claims she didn’t poison him, he poisoned himself.

Headline of the Day -100, Alliteration Division: “ELEPHANTS, PEANUTS AND FREAKS AGAIN; Blare of Big Bass in Barnum & Bailey Band Begins the Big Ballet. Ancient Animals Amuse All, and Active, Airy Athletes Annex Animated Admiration.” Freaks, by the way, had been absent from the big top since the merger of Barnum & Bailey with Ringling Brothers five years ago, but they’re back, because who doesn’t love a good freak show? The freaks include a 700-pound lady, the 19-inch-tall Princess Wee Wee, African pygmies, and of course Zipp, for whom no description is forthcoming beyond “amiable grotesque.” *Pauses for research into this important historical phenomenon...* Ah, that must be “Zip the Pinhead,” who has a Wikipedia page. The clowns performed a suffragette parade – the mind boggles.

The Academy of Misapplied Art of NYC holds an exhibition of “cubistic, past-impressionistic, futuristic, neurotic, psychopathic, and paretic” art, i.e., a parody of the recently closed Armory Show. I wonder if any of this art survived. I couldn’t find “Food Descending a Staircase” or “Emotions of a Lady of Sixty-Three on Roller Skates” on Google Images. Congrats to the NYT for reviewing this show, and for the phrase “outcube the cubists.”

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Today -100: March 22, 1913: Of sieges, lynchings, and hash

Montenegro rejects Austria’s demands that it let civilians leave besieged Scutari and let the Austrian consul investigate the alleged forced conversions of Catholics.

A black man accused of murder (he broke into the house of an old white man and demanded money when the old guy found him in the kitchen eating; the white dude shot at him, he returned later with his own gun) is lynched in Union City, Tennessee.

Manuel Bonilla, self-proclaimed president of the coup government in Honduras, dies of kidney trouble. Will this lead to a much-feared general revolution which will sweep away all the governments of Central America? Spoiler Alert: no.

Headline of the Day -100: “Soldiers in Home Demand More Hash.”

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Obama in the Middle East: A state of their own

Obama went to the West Bank today.

WHAT THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE DESERVE: “The Palestinian people deserve an end to occupation and the daily indignities that come with it. Palestinians deserve to move and travel freely, and to feel secure in their communities.” Yesterday when he was standing next to Netanyahu, as I noted, he said that Israel should be “strong and secure” but didn’t say the same about Palestine. Today, standing next to Abbas, he used the second s-word (although for Palestinians as individuals, not in the collective).

“Put simply, Palestinians deserve a state of their own.”

He says that the West Bank is wonderful and thriving and whatnot “in stark contrast to the misery and repression that so many Palestinians continue to confront in Gaza -- because Hamas refuses to renounce violence; because Hamas cares more about enforcing its own rigid dogmas than allowing Palestinians to live freely; and because too often it focuses on tearing Israel down rather than building Palestine up.” Yes, the Israeli blockade of Gaza has absolutely no causal relationship with misery and repression in Gaza, and everything is Hamas’s fault.

WELL, IT IS LITERALLY CONSTRUCTIVE, WITH THE BUILDINGS AND THE FENCES AND THE JEWS-ONLY ROADS BEING, YOU KNOW, CONSTRUCTED: “we do not consider continued settlement activity to be constructive, to be appropriate, to be something that can advance the cause of peace. So I don’t think there’s any confusion in terms of what our position is.” Yes, your position is that you won’t do a damn thing to stop it, ever; no confusion about that.

Indeed, he later responds to a question by refusing to call for Israel to stop building settlements before peace talks, calling that demand “constantly negotiating about what’s required to get into talks in the first place” and “put[ting] the cart before the horse.” In fact, all you have to do is negotiate a sovereign Palestine and a secure Israel and “the settlement problem will be solved.” So I guess we can solve the settlement problem without ever talking about settlements, because that’ll totally work.

Abbas drily points out that settlements violate international law.



Later in the day, Obama gave a speech in the Jerusalem Convention Center.

ALSO A NICE COFFEE CAKE: “I bring with me the support of the American people, and the friendship that binds us together.”

He repeatedly referred to Israeli Jews as “a free people in a land of their own.”

CLEAR: “That’s why we have made it clear, time and again, that Israel cannot accept rocket attacks from Gaza”.



THEY BUILT A STATE IN WHOSE HOMELAND? “Just as Israelis built a state in their homeland, Palestinians have a right to be a free people in their own land.”

A WORLD THAT HAS CHANGED: “Arab States must adapt to a world that has changed. The days when they could condemn Israel to distract their people from a lack of opportunity are over.” Yeah, the rights of the Palestinians are just a “distraction” and any Arab state that brings them up must be doing so cynically to hoodwink their own people (which is not to say that that hasn’t happened, frequently, but Obama implies that that’s the ONLY reason anyone ever champions the Palestinians.

“Now is the time for the Arab World to take steps toward normalized relations with Israel.” Before Israel’s borders are settled and it comes to an accommodation with the Palestinian people? No, now is not the time.

“Meanwhile, Palestinians must recognize that Israel will be a Jewish state”. And that they will either be expelled or remain as second-class citizens – you know, business as usual. Honestly, they should just recognize that already.

Oh, and somewhere in the middle of his speech, someone heckled him (in Hebrew) about Jonathan Pollard.



By the way, Israel has exerted a lot of pressure to pardon Pollard over the years, but has never been willing to tell the US exactly what documents Pollard handed over.

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Today -100: March 21, 1913: Of warships, arson, and cinders

Austria is sending six warships towards the Balkan war zone, supposedly for maneuvers, but actually to prevent Serbia and Montenegro gaining too much territory. We’re also getting stories about Catholics being forcibly “converted” to Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

Suffragettes supposedly burn down the mansion of Lady Smith, widow of George Smith, a less-than-competent general of the Boer War, the “defender of Ladysmith” (the town, not his wife).

Sensitive Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times, reporting an auto accident): “Man is Burned to Cinder Under Capsized Machine.”

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