TW3

October 17th, 2007

That Was The Week That Was … busy, impactful and slightly demented … and do notice that EVERYBODY’s got an opinion about it. There are sound bites galore, below.

Oh — and cannibalism again this week … always makes me worry about our global psyche. Hansel and Gretel? Pffffft!

Of note: yesterdays alert about Randi Rhodes was bogus … she did break teeth but that was evidently in a fall, and not a mugging. Good news, indeed.

Today, I am on duty to help the grandarlin’s make Snickerdoodles … they’ve waited a year and refuse to put it off any longer. That is my smile for day — if you don’t have one of your own, feel free to share mine. : )

Jude

HARPER’S WEEKLY REVIEW
October 16, 2007

Turkey shelled the village of Dashta Takh in Iraqi
Kurdistan and declared plans to send its ground troops to
attack outposts of the Kurdish separatist PKK in the north
of Iraq; criticized for the announcement, Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan pointed out that the United States
invaded Iraq without anyone’s permission. After the House
Foreign Affairs Committee voted for a resolution affirming
that a genocide was committed by Ottoman Turks against
Armenians during World War I, General Yasar Buyukanit,
commander of the Turkish armed forces, said that, should
Congress pass the resolution, his country’s military
alliance with the United States would never be the
same. “We could not,” he said, “explain this to our
public. The U.S., in that respect, has shot itself in the
foot.” The Marine Corps was seeking to withdraw its 25,000
troops in Iraq and redeploy them to Afghanistan, and CIA
Director General Michael V. Hayden ordered an internal
investigation of the agency’s inspector general, John
L. Helgerson, whose own investigations have harshly
criticized the CIA’s methods of interrogation and its
failure to prevent the attacks of September 11, 2001. Hugo
Chavez broadcast his weekly television program, “Alo
Presidente,” from Che Guevara’s mausoleum in Santa Clara,
Cuba, to honor the fortieth anniversary of the guerilla
leader’s death. “We are the Axis of Evil,” said Fidel
Castro to Chavez via phone. “You will never die,” said
Chavez to Castro. “You remain forever on this continent,
and with these nations, and this revolution is more alive
today than ever, and Fidel, you know it.” Ramzi Yousef,
the jailed mastermind of the 1993 bombing of the World
Trade Center, converted to Christianity, and guru Sri
Chinmoy, author of 1,500 books and organizer of the
Self-Transcendence 3,100, the world’s longest footrace,
died of a heart attack.

Six million dollars in Nobel Prizes were awarded to: a
pair of physicists who discovered giant magnetoresistance;
a chemist who created a method for studying surface
chemical reactions such as rust; three doctors who used
stem cells to deactivate mouse genes; three economists who
study malfunctioning markets; novelist Doris Lessing; and
documentary film star Al Gore, who, along with the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was cited for
efforts “to lay the foundations for the measures that are
needed to counteract [climate] change.” Former aides to
Gore told the press that he was unlikely to join the
presidential race because he thinks Hillary Clinton is
unstoppable. “Nothing is inevitable,” said Barack Obama’s
wife, Michelle, of a Clinton victory. “Sometimes we wear
the same suit even if it’s got holes in it. We need a new
suit, not just a new tie or new pants.” The Republican
candidates for president gathered in Dearborn, Michigan,
for a debate on the economy. Mitt Romney, who was born in
Detroit, bemoaned the “one-state recession” gripping
Michigan; Duncan Hunter repeatedly blamed the loss of
American manufacturing jobs on free-trade policies with
“communist China”; Ron Paul attributed the large profits
of hedge-fund managers to a conspiracy among politicians,
banks, Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, and the
military-industrial complex to inflate or destroy
currencies and swindle the middle class; and John McCain
advised Paul to read “The Wealth of Nations.” The
candidates generally agreed that taxes are too
high. “We’re taxed to the max,” said Sam Brownback. Mike
Huckabee touted his Fair Tax proposal to abolish the IRS
and to tax consumption as a way to shift the tax burden
onto drug dealers, pimps, prostitutes, and illegal
immigrants. Paul and Tom Tancredo refused to pledge to
support the Republican nominee in the general
election. Two thirds of American CEOs, a study found,
think that American CEOs are overpaid.

Investigating the disappearance of a 30-year-old female
pharmacist, police in Mexico arrested her boyfriend, Jose
Luis Calva, after finding the woman’s torso in his closet,
one of her legs in his refrigerator, bones in a cereal
box, chunks of an unidentified fried meat in a pan, and
the draft manuscript of a novel entitled “Cannibalistic
Instincts.” Germans were reading “Interview with a
Cannibal,” the story of Armin Meiwes. In the book, Meiwes
urges other would-be cannibals to seek psychiatric help,
expresses disappointment that the experience was not as
“romantic” as he dreamed it would be, and cites the fairy
tale of Hansel and Gretel as inspiration for his 2001
slaughter and ingestion of Bernd Brandes, who volunteered
over the Internet to be eaten. “For him,” said Meiwes “it
was a sexual thing. But he also thought like me he would
live on in me.” The Colombian game show “Nothing but the
Truth” was canceled after a woman won $25,000 for
admitting to have hired a hit man to kill her husband, and
a Kremlin spokeswoman said assassins are plotting to kill
Vladimir Putin this week during his visit to Tehran. Bo
Ward, the proprietor of a barbershop near the Army’s Fort
Campbell, committed suicide at a town meeting in
Clarksville, Tennessee. Ward had requested that his home
be rezoned as a commercial property to increase its value
and to offset the losses he suffered when most of his
regular patrons, among them General David Petraeus, were
deployed to Iraq; the City Council refused. “Y’all have
put me under,” said the barber before inserting a pistol
into his mouth. “I’m out of here.”

– Christian Lorentzen
http://harpers.org/archive/2007/10/WeeklyReview2007-10-16

“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