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Sony, which used quotes from a non-existent critic in its ads for several movies, has been ordered to refund $5 to anyone who paid to see Vertical Limit, A Knight’s Tale, The Animal, Hollow Man or The Patriot. Variety headline: “Sony in Fix over Fake Crix.”
Achmad Chalabi’s head of public relations is shot to death, which to my mind speaks very poorly about his abilities in the public relations field. Just saying.
That AP story also has this bit of, I’m assuming, parody:
Seeking to reassure the public, Iraq’s prime minister announced a new plan for combating insurgents, declaring “we are in a state of war.”
Prime Minister Ibrahim Al-Jaafari gave few details of the plan but said it was divided into 12 points and included steps to improve intelligence, protect infrastructure and prevent foreign fighters from infiltrating the country.
I’m reassured just knowing that his plan is divided into 12 points, aren’t you? I mean, that’s a lot of points. And that Iraq is in a state of war, that’s awfully reassuring as well.
Speaking of state of war, we’re evidently back to The War Against Terror (TWAT), because Chimpy couldn’t memorize Global Struggle Against Violent Extremists.
Astonishingly, Haitians are not registering to vote. Only one-fifth have so far, and the deadline is next week. The International Crisis Group is blaming poor security, as opposed to the fact that the last democratically elected president was bundled onto a plane by American Marines, more or less at gun point, and sent into exile. Makes the whole voting thing seem kinda pointless.
George Lakoff writes about the Bushies’ rebranding of The War Against Terror (TWAT) into the Global Struggle Against Violet Violent Extremism (G-SAVE). He thinks the timing of the change was because the London bombings made nonsense of the claim that the war in Iraq had anything to do with preventing terrorism. One could equally claim that, since the purpose of the war frame was to consolidate unaccountable power in the hands of the president, the permanent renewal of the Patriot Act meant that TWAT’s true mission has been accomplished. Either way, Lakoff is right that the awkwardness of the new term is deliberate:
The new phrase is less comprehensible, long, complicated. You almost have to memorize it: ‘global struggle against ...what was that exact wording again? Oh yeah, ‘violent extremism.’ It doesn’t sound like poetry, but in a perverse way it is. It says the administration’s policy is like the words for it: hard to comprehend, long, complicated. The new phrase is not memorable, and that’s the point.
In fact, according to Rumsfeld, we’re pretty much bystanders: “This is not a war between the United States and the Muslim faith or between Iraq and the Muslim faith. It is a struggle within the Muslim faith.” Cool, so why are we occupying Iraq again?
Oscar Wilde, updated.
We return to that continual source of amusement, the London Review of Books personals:
My only academic achievement was contaminating the water supply in class 2C by sneezing over the beaker tray. It caused the biggest outbreak of conjunctivitis ever known at Sutton Primary. I wasn’t sorry then and I’m not sorry now. Bitter PR exec. (F, 34). WLTM man to 40 who enjoys living on the edge (of Putney). Box no. 15/04
Suggest to me something obscure. F,37 Clapham. Box no. 15/06
‘All he needs are some psychiatric treatments to reduce the strength and regularity of his biorhythmic brain explosion episodes. For one so young, his powers of telekinesis are far beyond that of any project we’ve developed so far. His brain has the power to rule the world. It may cause you some problems at home, but the benefits of the bionic mind far outweigh the pitfalls.’ My school report, 1979 (Porton Down Preparatory School). So much promise then, look at me now. Ex-superhero, now librarian (M, 31) seeks solvent woman to 35 for scrabble, real ale, and spontaneous morphing. Wilts. Box no. 15/07
Bellini(s) before Bellotto? Awfully attractive editor (F, 50) seeks cure for alliterative addiction. artywoman@lycos.com
Want to meet you, but I can give no information. katy@finecellwork.co.uk
[More of my LRB favorites here.]
The revolution will not only be televised, but trademarked: Viktor Yushchenko’s 19-year old son has registered all the logos of Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution.” Andriy Yushchenko has a BMW and a platinum cell phone, so the revolution was well worth it.
The US never has political fights over the important issues, like spelling. Not so the Germans. In my favorite sentence from any news story today, the London Times reports “The states of Bavaria and North Rhine Westphalia are refusing to implement the reform until the hyphen issue has been resolved.”
(Update): although there is this sentence, in the WaPo: “As a bystander showed off a cardboard box containing the bomber’s body parts, the shopkeeper asked: ‘When are we going to have quiet again and live like normal people?’”
That’s in Iraq, if you had to ask.
Bush is breaking Reagan’s record for longest presidential vacation (not counting the 80 days James Garfield spent lollygagging around after he was shot) and for most time spent on vacation. Bush says he needs the time to clear his mind, which may be the straightest straight line ever, and “I’ll also be kind of making sure my Texas roots run deep.”
Now I can’t get the image of him buried up to his waist out of my head. Horseshoes, anyone?
Since he doesn’t seem to be very busy, maybe they could get him to solve the hyphen issue.
Congrats to Eli Stephens on two years of Left I on the News (or 20 months since I discovered it, which is surely the more important milestone).
There’s something, actually several things, intrinsically amusing about the headline: “Grenades Thrown at Cockfight.”
Another headline: “King Fahd is Laid to Rest.” He will be buried in a giant vat of crude oil, as is the custom.
43% of people who have left the House or Senate since 1998 are now registered lobbyists.
Britain is asking the US to torture its ghost detainees to extract intelligence about the London bombers.
George Monbiot article on why the American and British plans to build usable tactical nuclear weapons and American treatment of new nuclear nations creates an incentive for nuclear proliferation.
Many Texas school districts are offering Bible study as, so far, an elective. The program, produced by the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (motto: “It’s Coming Back”), is anti-intellectual horseshit, as you’d expect (did you know that NASA has proven that the sun did stop in the sky, just like it said in the Bible?). Still, you have to wonder about this WaPo headline: “Bible Course Called Biased, Error-Filled.” Really, a course on the bible is biased and filled with errors? What else was it supposed to be filled with?
The US is still pretending that the reason it was told to get its troops the hell out of Uzbekistan was that it bravely stood up for human rights, because it was just the right thing to do, dammit, no matter what the consequences. But at the same time it’s pretending this, it’s very careful not actually to stand up for human rights, in case Uzbekistan changes its mind about the base. This from the DOD website: “The relationship between the United States and Uzbekistan has grown tense since protests in May in the Uzbek province of Andijan turned bloody. The Uzbeks said about 200 people were killed in the protests. The government maintains those killed were terrorists.” Way to stand up for human rights.
Bush recess-appoints John Bolton. I had already coined the phrase that Congressional D’s should, but won’t, use about this, “John Bolton speaks for the president, he does not speak for the United States,” when I found that Bush had beaten me to it, saying “He will speak for me on critical issues facing the international community,” thus demonstrating once again that Bush does not know the difference between a president and a king. L’état, c’est W.
The BBC says Bush accused D’s of forcing him to do this by their “shameful delaying tactics.” This from a man truly without shame. I mean, look at that tie.
Bush passed his medical checkup. His doctors say he is “fit for duty.” I’d like a second opinion.
James Wolfensohn, former head of the World Bank, has some helpful decorating advice for the Palestinians: use the rubble left after the Gaza settlements are demolished. Very DIY. I’m picturing Fred Flintstone’s house.
For a long time the Bush administration has bent over backwards to avoid any criticism of the dissident-boiling Karimov regime in Uzbekistan (see my many posts on the subject in May of this year), so it’s a little funny to read the claim that the US has been evicted from its Uzbek air base because of a rather modest call for an international inquiry into the May massacres, an inquiry it knows will never happen, and for asking Kyrgyzstan not to return some Uzbeks to certain death. And by funny, I mean unbelievable. Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, explains that the whole thing is actually about... wait for it... oil. Karimov has simply opted for the Russians rather than Americans to develop his oil and gas resources. Murray adds, “The US has managed to hand the dictator Karimov the propaganda coup of kicking out the world’s greatest power. ... If they had any dignity they would have jumped before they were pushed.”
The British government, by the way, which tried repeatedly to silence Murray while he was ambassador, including by claiming that he was an adulterer and a drunk, is now trying to block publication of a book he has written about the US and Britain’s implication in torture.
Pakistani dictator Musharraf, tired of being accused (correctly) of tolerating madrasas and training camps that churn out terrorists for export to the rest of the world, including two of the London bombers, has hit back at Britain, and in a weird, douchebaggy way he has a point:
“They should have been doing what they have been demanding of us to do — to ban extremist groups like they asked us to do here in Pakistan and which I have done.”
Of course I’m not agreeing that the West needs to do any such thing, but he is right about the hypocrisy exhibited by the US, Britain etc when they go beyond the legitimate demand that Muslim countries arrest criminals, and insist as well that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia crack down on preaching, close schools, and ban political organizations (yes, legitimate political activity can be difficult to disentangle from the other kind in those non-democracies, but a good rule of thumb is that if the activity would be protected by the First Amendment in this country, we shouldn’t ask for it to be punished elsewhere), that Palestine censor its media to eliminate “incitement” and “provocation,” and that someone, anyone, just shut Al Jazeera the fuck down already.
Rather like the indignation Russia expressed to the United States after Nightline broadcast an interview with Chechen rebel/terrorist (but he really wants to direct) Shamil Basayev. Funny, you never hear Vladimir Putin say of the Chechens, “They hate us for our freedom.”
Something’s up with the Bushies and Latin American policy, but I don’t know what. Roger Noriega, Assistant Secretary of State for Pissing All over Latin America Because It’s Ours Goddammit, has abruptly resigned from the government for reasons that are unclear but seem to have to do with the appointment of Caleb McCarry as “Cuba Transition Coordinator.” Worth keeping an eye on.
Bush has reverted to “war on terra.” Guess Global Struggle against Violent Extremism was a bit long for him to remember.
John McCain on the transportation bill: “I wonder what it’s going take to make the case for fiscal sanity here?” That a rhetorical question, Johnnie?
2003 UB313 is not a real planet, sorry Caltech, nice try.
Lots of blogs are linking to the Jean Schmidt interview. They’re focusing on her continuing attacks on Paul Hackett in their Congressional race for “expousing” the philosophy of Nancy Pelosi and Ted Kennedy. It’s hard to believe that she’s ever held legislative office or spoken in public before, but there it is. Expousing. I’m pretty sure she mispronounced nuclear too. A true Bushian. Do they come that ignorant or are they consciously imitating their leader?
I thought Eli was exaggerating for dramatic effect, as we bloggers do, when he said that the United States government now has a post of “Cuba Transition Coordinator.” He wasn’t. It really is as blatant as that. The new Cuba Transition Coordinator is one Caleb McCarry (!) and his mission is to “accelerate the demise of Castro’s tyranny.” Condi Rice says we are “working to deny resources to the Castro regime... and to broadcast the truth about its deplorable treatment of the Cuban people.” Which I take to mean we’ll be telling the Cuban people how badly treated they are, because otherwise they might not understand how badly treated they are. A quick googling indicates that Mr. McCarry has already brought democracy to Haiti, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic.
As ever, I’m impressed by the sophisticated grasp of other cultures and languages displayed by the State Department website, which quotes McCarry thus:
We are committed to seeing the day when Cubans around the world in the fullness of liberty can in every corner of Marti’s homeland speak the words that were born on the lips of Cuba’s first patriots. (Speaking in Spanish.) (Applause.)
Those words that so baffled the monolingual Staties, according to the AFP, were: “Viva Cuba libre.”
London Times article on the not-so-creeping Talibanization of the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, including banning women voting. The central government keeps saying this sort of thing won’t be tolerated, and then keeps tolerating it. The article leaves out some important details, including the size and population of the province, and, while it mentions that male doctors have been banned from treating female patients, doesn’t say how many female doctors, if any, there are in the province. I know that when this was enacted two years ago, there were no women trained in ultrasound, and just one in EKGs. The worry was that the doctors would be sexually stimulated, and that women would “lure men under the pretext of ECG or ultrasound.” Hoo baby.
There’s a whole big thing going on between Poland and Belarus, which is more than just a diplomatic confrontation since there is a large ethnic Polish population in Belarus. Lukashenko is claiming that not just Poland and Lithuania but the US are actively trying to depose him.
It was on the bottom of the NYT’s front page, but got no play elsewhere: in the run-up to yesterday’s vote on the godawful energy bill, which does nothing to make automobiles more fuel efficient, the EPA delayed the release of an annual report showing that American vehicles are now less fuel-efficient than they were in the 1980s.
A sure sign that Russia has entered the modern capitalist world: a Russian woman is suing McDonald’s after she was burnt by a cup of coffee. She’s only asking $32,000, so they still have a way to come yet.
The US has imposed a total, indefinite curfew in Samarra after an attack on a convoy. The Press Association story has this line:
“There is currently, and until further notice, no vehicle or pedestrian activity allowed in Samarra,” said a spokesman for Task Force Liberty.
They might want to rethink the name of that task force.
The Israeli Knesset votes to stop Palestinians suing the state for damages inflicted on them by the military. Retroactive to 2000. And also to limit the ability of Israeli women to pass their citizenship to their husbands, if those husbands happen to be Palestinian.
The family of the Brazilian man shot dead by the Metropolitan Police say that he was not in fact wearing a bulky jacket, nor did he jump a ticket barrier, as the police had claimed. Their lawyer, who seems to be a woman named Gareth Peirce, comments that everyone is talking about the “shoot to kill” policy as if it were a legal term with some sort of legitimacy.
The word of the day at the Pentagon website today is “laud.” One headline: “Secretary Lauds Deployed Servicemembers.” Another: “McDonald’s Lauded for Support.” Evidently that support is “super-sized.” And high in saturated fats. Oh, and McDonald’s D’s “also offers career opportunities to disabled servicemembers and military veterans”. Sarcastic responses to that in comments, please.
Rummy told the future burger-flippers troops that he expected terrorist attacks to increase until the new Iraqi constitution is finalized, oh and until the referendum on it, and gosh who knows, maybe after that as well. And that’s an excellent sign, because suicide bombings are “a sign of weakness” and desperation. Can you believe they’re still pushing that line?
Scotty McClellan justified the White House refusal to turn over various documents written by John Roberts because “we have a responsibility not only to preserve the attorney-client privilege for this administration, but also for future administrations.” “Future administrations,” boy that’s a blast from the Nixonian past, a leaf out of the Big Book O’ Stonewalling. He slyly followed this up by saying that to release the docs would “stifle” the advice given to the solicitor general by his staff in the future, clearly a subtle reference to that staple of the Nixon era, All in the Family, part of a ‘70s nostalgia thing.
By the way, if the president or the solicitor general were the “client” part of the attorney-client relationship, shouldn’t they have paid Roberts’ salary out of their own pockets?
I’ve been reading Prop 73 on California’s November ballot (pdf file), mandating parental notification of abortion for minors. I’d be against this anyway, but there are one or two problems with the judicial bypass provisions: it can take so long that parental notification might become redundant; and if there is any sort of abuse, including “emotional abuse,” the court must inform Protective Services, a provision which seems less about protecting abused pregnant minors than it is a “nuclear option” designed to raise the stakes for girls opting for abortion. The agenda of punishing the little trollops is made even clearer in the ballot argument for the prop.: “When parents are involved and minors cannot anticipate secret access to free abortions they more often avoid the reckless behavior which leads to pregnancies.” Also, the prop. requires doctors to report abortions performed on minors to the state. That can’t be good.
Chuck Schumer’s list of questions for John Roberts to evade answering, doesn’t suck, although it avoids issues relating to the death penalty and the Second Amendment. Just as Schumer has given Roberts the questions in advance, Roberts should be pressured to give his answers in advance, in writing, so that he may be cross-questioned about them.
So Roberts can’t remember whether he was ever a member of the Federalist Society? How credible is that? There are organizations I once gave some money to but haven’t in 10 or 15 years that still send me “renewal” notices on a regular basis. Here’s the helpful comment of John Cornyn on the subject: “It’s not like being a member of the Communist Party.”
I know that lawyers’ ideas of ethics are not those of normal people, but I was always under the impression that lawyers weren’t supposed to lie in court. So while Roberts may have been arguing the position of the Bush 1 administration, was it ethical to make an argument that Roe v. Wade was “wrongly decided and should be overruled” unless he actually believed that position to be correct?
Speaking of lawyers with retarded clients, a jury is being empaneled in Virginia solely to decide whether a man already convicted of murder is mentally retarded or not; if the latter, he will be executed. And while I know it’s a civic duty and all that, let’s face it, we’re all thinking the same thing: a man’s IQ will be determined by a group of people who couldn’t get out of jury duty. The man’s tested IQ has risen from 59 to somewhere in the 70’s, above what counts as retarded in Virginia, an increase which is attributed to the mental stimulation he received by working with his lawyers on his case, mental stimulation entirely lacking from his life previously. Sometimes irony gets you executed. To ensure that the trial not be fair, the judge has ruled that the jury may hear the details of the murder, which are of course entirely irrelevant to determining whether he is retarded.
Pakistani dictator Musharaf claims that “Al-Qaeda does not exist in Pakistan any more.” Although it hasn’t stopped him using the London bombings as an excuse to further criminalize speech acts, which will now be tried in anti-terrorism courts.
Bush has called, several times now, for the confirmation process for John Roberts to be “dignified.” First, let’s all take a moment out of our busy day to contemplate Flight Suit Boy lecturing other people about dignity. I can’t even imagine how he defines dignity in this context (but then, I can’t imagine him spelling dignity). Possibly for him, nothing says dignity and gravitas like abject capitulation and subservience, like that butler he always calls Jeeves, whose name is not actually Jeeves, who always says Yes sir, at once sir, in that fruity accent.
Met Chief Sir Ian Blair says the “shoot-to-kill-in-order-to-protect” policy will remain, acknowledging that a few more innocent civilians may well get wacked, but what the hey. He suggests Londoners cheerfully accept the risk they now face because the intentions of the police who may soon be shooting them in the head are just so darned good: “there is no conspiracy to shoot people.” No indeed, my computer’s dictionary defines a conspiracy as “a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful,” and there’s nothing secret about this, Sir Ian just announced the plan before God and everyone.
And in fact Londoners have pretty much done what he suggests. Bionic Octopus points to a comments page on the BBC website which is just full of outpourings of sympathy for the true victims of this whole affair: the poor, poor peelers who shot Jean Charles de Menezes repeatedly in the head.
Fortunately, Pope Benny has prayed for God to stop terrorism, so that should take care of that problem.
So on the bottom of a page well inside the Saturday edition of the NYT we find a story to the effect that American forces are involved in military operations in the Philippines. Are they actually in combat, as “numerous reports” say, or merely supplying intelligence and communications support, as the military claims? Who knows? Who can even keep track of how many countries the US military operates in? Didn’t we send troops into Yemen at some point? I’m just saying it would be nice to know precisely how many wars and civil wars we’re participating in.
Metropolitan police chief Sir Ian Blair sort of admits the shoot-to-kill policy and says, yeah, they’ll probably wind up shooting a few other innocent people. The “sort of” is because what he actually said was, “I am very aware that minority communities are talking about a shoot-to-kill policy. It’s only a shoot-to-kill-in-order-to-protect policy.” So that’s ok, then.
The word in that sentence that makes it high comedy: “only.”
The White House has been lobbying in favor of retaining the military’s right to engage in cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners. It would have been interesting to hear what exactly Cheney said to former POW John McCain, the sponsor of the proposed legislation, in support of the cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners.
Speaking of cruel, inhuman and degrading, Howard Dean has signed on to the Hillary Clinton suck-up–to-anti-abortionists position, telling college D’s, “I think we need to talk about this issue differently. The Republicans have painted us as a pro-abortion party. I don’t know anybody in America who is pro-abortion.” He should get out more. “You have to respect people’s positions of conscience,” he said, failing to add, “especially when those people want to impose those ‘positions of conscience’ on other people.”
Plain-clothes London police chased and shot dead a Brazilian man yesterday. Today they fessed up that it was all a big misunderstanding, which is refreshing compared to, say, the LAPD, which recently shot dead a baby held by a man with a gun and won’t admit there was anything wrong with that, or the LA County Sheriffs, who fired 120 rounds at an unarmed black man in Compton in May (without killing him, so they’re trigger happy and they can’t hit the side of a barn, a perfect combination), and don’t think they violated his civil rights. The Peelers now seem to have a policy where if they see someone doing something suspicious near some form of mass transit, like a dark-skinned man running away when he suddenly finds himself being chased by a mob of people not wearing police uniforms, they will shoot him in the head, in case he was planning to detonate something.
Billmon has a must-read post on the Patriot Act, which the House today voted 257-171 to extend and to make most of it permanent.
A CIA agent has a book out in which he says that one week after 9/11, he was on a plane to Afghanistan with a team of agents and $3m in hundreds, with orders to bring back Osama bin Laden’s head – literally. The agent, Gary Schroen, claims to have responded, “Sir, those are the clearest orders I have ever received. I can certainly make pikes out in the field but I don’t know what I’ll do about dry ice to bring the head back - but we’ll manage something.” It’s that can-do spirit that made America great.
For a can of beans and a dickhead to be named later.
Rumsfeld, talking about the assassination of the two Sunnis: “the perspective I would give to it is the fact that these kinds of problems have occurred month after month after month, and yet, we always see more people step up to participate in the elections, more people step up to participate in the Iraqi Transitional Assembly and to run for public office, more people step up to serve in the Iraqi security forces.” So that’s his version of optimism: we haven’t run out of Iraqis yet.
BBC headline: “US Fury as Sudan Manhandles Staff.” Sounds really gay to me, but you’ve gotta appreciate the sense of proportion. Genocide in Sudan? Sure, whatever, blah blah. But push around some staffers, and face the wrath of the Condi.
