TW3

October 3rd, 2007

That Was The Week That Was … absurd, all of it.

The “Socrates of the Third Millennium?” Pfffft!

“Childrens do learn?” Double-Pfffft!

Oh, and for goodness sake — give the man his LEG back; if that doesn’t qualify as “personal property,” nothing does!

Jude

HARPER’S WEEKLY REVIEW
October 2, 2007

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, hailed by his
countrymen as the “Socrates of the Third Millennium” for
“disarming other speakers through his sharp reasoning,”
gave a speech on Monday in which he claimed that Iran had
no homosexuals and disavowed reports of his nuclear
ambitions. “Let me tell a joke here,” Ahmadinejad said. “I
think the politicians who are after atomic bombs, or
testing them, making them, politically they are backward,
retarded.” On Tuesday he met with Zimbabwe President
Robert Mugabe, addressed the United Nations (where he
announced that he would disregard any resolutions adopted
by the Security Council), and hosted a reception at the
Intercontinental Hotel that was attended by Brian Williams
and Christiane Amanpour. President George W. Bush skipped
all events related to the U.N. discussions on global
warming, except for dinner, because he was holding his own
summit later in the week; reporters covering the Bush
conference received a pocket-sized handout aimed at
dispelling “myths” about the administration’s
environmental policy, including the myths that Bush
refuses to admit that humans are a factor in climate
change, or that climate change is real. A February 2003
transcript of a meeting between Bush and Spanish Prime
Minister Jose Maria Aznar surfaced showing that Bush had
knowledge that Saddam Hussein was prepared to go into
exile. In the transcript, Bush complained about former
French President Jacques Chirac, who “thinks he’s
Mr. Arab,” and the European attitude toward
Hussein. “Maybe it’s because he’s dark-skinned, far away,
and Muslim,” said the President, “lots of Europeans think
everything’s okay with him.” The annotated text of Bush’s
address to the U.N. General Assembly appeared briefly on
the U.N. website. The speech included phonetic spellings
for the name of French President Nicolas Sarkozy
(sar-KO-zee), Kyrgyzstan (KEYR-geez-stan), Mauritania
(moor-EH-tain-ee-a), and the Zimbabwe capital Harare
(hah-RAR-ray). A White House transcript of Bush’s
Wednesday speech on education was amended from “children
do learn” to “childrens (sic) do learn,” and British
researchers studying intelligence announced that men were
disproportionately represented in both the top and bottom
two percentiles.

Protesters in Burma, which tied Somalia for the 2007 title
of Transparency International’s most corrupt nation,
taunted soldiers in the country’s largest anti-government
demonstrations since 1988. “Fuck you, army,” jeered some
protesters, “we only want democracy.” “May the people who
beat monks be struck down by lightning,” implored
others. Rwanda, which will soon be paid a humanitarian
visit by Paris Hilton, was named the most improved country
in sub-Saharan Africa; former Peruvian President Alberto
Fujimori was extradited to Peru and is expected to become
the first head of state to be tried by the country he once
led; and former South African President Nelson Mandela
opened a shopping mall in Soweto. James Razsa, who cleaned
the Kennebunkport pool of former President George
H.W. Bush, told a reporter that “if every American had to
pool-boy for these people for a day, you’d have a
revolution on your hands.” Both the Magna Carta and pearls
that once belonged to Marie Antoinette were being readied
for auction, and a Rudy Giuliani supporter in Palo Alto,
California, charged guests $9.11 per person to attend a
fundraiser. The board of the World Trade Center Survivors’
Network voted to remove its president after doubts were
cast as to whether she was a survivor at all.

The Department of Homeland Security announced that the
completion of a $20 million “virtual fence” pilot project
along the Mexican border near Tucson would be delayed
because its cameras and radar were unable to distinguish
people and vehicles from bushes and cows. Nike unveiled
the Air Native, a sneaker that has a larger fit for the
distinct foot shape of American Indians and features
several “heritage callouts,” including sunrise patterns,
feather designs, and stars representing the night sky. The
Mexican shoemaker who made the pair of ostrich-skin cowboy
boots that former President Vicente Fox gave to President
Bush was indicted after the contraband skins of sea
turtles, caimans, and other endangered species were found
in an associate’s warehouse. Riverside, New Jersey, joined
the list of towns across the nation that were rescinding
anti-immigrant ordinances because they were hurting local
economies. “The business district is fairly vacant now,
but it’s not the legitimate businesses that are gone,”
said former mayor Charles Hilton. “It’s all the ones that
were supporting the illegal immigrants, or, as I like to
call them, the criminal aliens.” A bus company on the Isle
of Wight planned to teach visiting foreign students how to
wait in lines, an Austrian judge refused to declare a
chimpanzee a person, and the Tennessee Court of Appeals
ruled women must return engagement rings should their
wedding be canceled, even if the ring was received on
Christmas Day. A 14-year-old boy was reported to be the
sixth American to die this year after contracting a
brain-eating amoeba that thrives in warm-water lakes. Miss
Moneypenny died, and two women dressed as ninjas and armed
with a sword and dagger robbed a Pennsylvania gas station
of cash, cigarettes, and lottery tickets. Officials in
Peru said that collective psychosis, rather than a
meteorite, was to blame for an epidemic of sickness in a
Peruvian town, and the Navy made plans to alter the
barracks at Naval Base Coronado in California after
satellite imagery showed the buildings were arranged in a
swastika. Shannon Whisnant, a North Carolina man who found
a leg in a barbecue smoker, was hoping to share custody of
the leg with the man from whom it was amputated. Whisnant
has been charging adults $3 and children $1 to look inside
the empty smoker. “It’s a strange incident and Halloween’s
just around the corner,” he said. “The price will be going
up if I get the leg.”

– Miriam Markowitz
http://harpers.org/archive/2007/10/WeeklyReview2007-10-02

“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