TW3

August 15th, 2007

That Was The Week That Was … mayhem. Tornados and monsoons, hurricanes and earthquakes, economic rattle and roll, stories of torture and repression — ain’t we got fun? Not mentioned here is a long list of “home town” stories that are popping up like weeds; the shooting at a sleepy little local church, here, is typical. And this one — Lord LOVE us, where did our common sense go?

Jude

HARPER’S WEEKLY REVIEW
August 14, 2007

In the midst of a brief thunderstorm that transfixed the
New York City subway system and killed one motorist, a
tornado formed over the Atlantic Ocean, grazed the north
coast of Staten Island, and blew into Brooklyn, felling
292 trees, ripping roofs off dozens of buildings, and
displacing 200 people from their homes. Losses among
lenders to American debtors led to a one-day plunge of 387
points in the Dow Industrial Average. The Federal Reserve
injected $62 billion into the market–its largest
intervention since September 19, 2001–and its
international counterparts followed suit. Hedge funds were
in the red. “You have a better chance at making money on
the craps table than in this market,” remarked one
analyst. Germany’s leading regulator warned that the
country risked tumbling into its worst financial crisis
since the 1930s, and the public disclosure of Adolf
Hitler’s private record collection indicated that the
Fuehrer enjoyed listening to Jewish musicians play
Tchaikovsky. The discovery of a 1973 document proved that
it was Stasi policy to “stop or liquidate” defectors
attempting to escape East Germany over the Berlin Wall,
especially those accompanied by women and children. China
Public Security, a U.S.-financed company contracted by the
People’s Republic, was outfitting the city of Shenzen with
20,000 surveillance cameras and issuing identity cards to
record each citizen’s name, address, employment status,
education, religion, ethnicity, police record,
medical-insurance status, reproductive history, and
landlord’s phone number. “If they do not get the permanent
card,” said a China Public Security executive, “they
cannot live here, they cannot get government benefits, and
that is a way for the government to control the population
in the future.” It was reported that Rudolph Giuliani’s
daughter, Caroline, a member of the Harvard class of 2011,
was affiliated with the Facebook.com group “Barack Obama
(One Million Strong for Barack)”; she had recently left
the group, but her page maintained that her political
views are “Liberal” and that she is single, interested in
men, and looking for “Friendship,” “Random play,” or
“Whatever I can get.”

Seif al-Islam Qaddafi, son of Muammar Qaddafi, affirmed
that recently released Bulgarian and Palestinian medical
workers accused of spreading HIV to Libyan babies were
tortured while in custody. “Yes,” he said, “they were
tortured by electricity, and they were threatened that
their family members would be targeted.” Anonymous sources
told a reporter that purported Al Qaeda mastermind Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed was told by his American captors, “We’re
not going to kill you. But we’re going to take you to the
very brink of your death and back.” Sources also said
Mohammed was kept naked in his cell, hung by his arms from
the ceiling, and flung against the walls by a leash around
his neck. Daniel Pearl’s widow and father expressed doubts
about the egomaniacal detainee’s claim that he beheaded
the Wall Street Journal reporter. The United States denied
approving the Iraqi Interior Ministry’s $39.7 million
purchase of 105,000 Russian-made assault rifles from the
Italian Mafia. A senior official of the Iraqi Interior
Ministry, which has backed Shiite death squads in the
Shiite-Sunni civil war, said “most” of the Russian guns
were meant for its police in the Sunni-majority Anbar
province; Iraqi officials also complained that U.S. gun
deliveries are slow. Nominally antiwar Democrats Barack
Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards admitted that if
elected to the White House they would worry about
terrorism launched from a failed Iraqi state, threats to
the Kurds, and the prospect of Shiite-on-Sunni genocide,
and because of these fears they would continue the
occupation of Iraq for a long time.

A rocket launched from Gaza struck a ranch owned by
comatose former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, Hank
Aaron’s home run record was broken, and three college
students were murdered execution-style in a New Jersey
playground. An eight-foot-five-inch Ukrainian, Leonid
Stadnyk, was declared the world’s tallest man; locals
attributed his size to a brain operation in adolescence,
and the penurious Stadnyk lamented that his continuous
growth had ended his career as a veterinarian when he
became too large to fit into a car and his fingers grew
too big for him to press buttons. “Doctors tell me I will
live a long life,” he said. “I hope it will be in
happiness.” In India police killed a protester at a riot
of flood victims, and the monsoon death toll climbed above
2,000, with many of the fatalities blamed on
snakebites. “Everyone is crammed in together,” said an
expert, “and the chances of running into snakes, stepping
on them, grabbing them, and sleeping on them is much, much
more.” Karl Rove announced his resignation. A straw poll
of Iowa Republicans lent an aura of viability to the
presidential candidacies of Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee
but caused Tommy Thompson to drop out of the race. Teacher
Barbara Morgan, Christa McAuliffe’s backup on the
ill-fated 1986 Challenger mission, blasted into orbit on
board the space shuttle Endeavour, which suffered damage
to its heat shield. Five billion light years from earth,
four galaxies violently converged; astronomers predicted
that over the next 100 million years they will fuse into a
single galaxy ten times larger than the Milky Way. A
celestial plume of billions of expelled stars bloomed from
the collision. Half of these stars will resettle in the
new giant galaxy; the rest are lost in space.

– Christian Lorentzen

http://harpers.org/archive/2007/08/WeeklyReview2007-08-14

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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Entry Filed under: Political Waves