TW3 — and the

April 2nd, 2008

That Was The Week That Was … perplexing.

This review mentions the bats — this is another B word [birds, bees] I’ve been keeping an eye on. If bats disappear, mosquitoes and the like increase causing damage to crops and critters and spreading disease.

Very distressing — as are the fuses for nuclear warheads being shipped off and missing, unnoticed, for over a year; along with this summer’s little accidental outing of nuclear warheads, its obvious that we don’t have a handle on the seriousness of this issue.

Nuclear security should be Number One priority in the US of A — of the whole world. This apparent cluelessness is typical of the kind of government we’ve had in these last years — so if the B’s are going to disappear, I’m urging them to take Bush with them [who's not unfamiliar with 'white-nose syndrome,' himself.]

Jude

HARPER’S WEEKLY REVIEW
April 1, 2008

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered an offensive
against the Mahdi Army, a large Shia militia allied with
cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, in the oil-rich southern port city
of Basra. Senator John McCain called the offensive “a sign
of the strength of [Maliki's] government,” President
George W. Bush said it was “a positive moment in the
development of a sovereign nation,” and a Pentagon
spokesman called it “a by-product of the success of the
surge.” The offensive, dubbed the Charge of the Knights,
erupted into six days of heavy fighting that spread across
southern Iraq and to Sadr City, a Baghdad slum where three
million Shia live. After a stern ultimatum failed to bring
peace, Maliki offered cash rewards to militiamen who
turned in their weapons. Forty Iraqi policemen were
reported to have given their weapons for free to Mahdi
Army officers. Iraqi officials went to Iran to negotiate
directly with al-Sadr, who told his followers to stop
fighting if the Iraqi government grants them
amnesty. “Sayyed Moqtada al-Sadr,” said Parliament speaker
Mahmoud al-Mashadani, “proved that he is a good
politician.” It was revealed that a 2002 Iraq trip by
three antiwar congressmen was paid for by Saddam Hussein’s
intelligence agency, and that a Miami Beach company
supplied U.S. allies in Afghanistan with defective,
40-year-old, Chinese-made bullets; the president of the
company, 22-year-old Efraim Diveroli of Miami Beach, has
been a defense contractor since he was 18. “I’m basically
just working,” Diveroli explained on his MySpace page,
“and chilling with my boyz.”

American housing prices continued to fall, and financial
institutions worldwide, which have lost $295 billion so
far, were expected to lose hundreds of billions
more. McCain asked mortgage lenders to provide voluntary
aid to homeowners, recalling that General Motors had
offered no-interest car financing after September
11. Senator Hillary Clinton suggested consulting former
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. While Clinton
conceded that Greenspan helped cause the current crisis,
she claimed that he has a “calming influence” on Wall
Street. “Don’t ask me why,” she said, “because I never
understand what he’s saying.” Senator Barack Obama gave a
stirring speech, invoking the history of American finance
from Hamilton and Jefferson to the present day, and
Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr. proposed the
largest reform of the American financial system since the
Great Depression. The cost of rice increased by 30
percent, raising fears of unrest in rice-eating countries,
and the village of Roecken, Germany, debated moving
Friedrich Nietzsche’s grave in order to extract the coal
underneath his remains.

Nine Americans sued their former employer, defense
contractor KBR, for intentionally exposing them to
carcinogens, and doctors at the University of Miami at
Jackson announced that they had temporarily removed a
patient’s stomach, pancreas, spleen, liver, and most of
her intestines in order to get at a stubborn
tumor. Euthanasia advocate Jack Kevorkian announced that
he was running for Congress, and the Pentagon announced
that it had accidentally shipped four fuses for nuclear
warheads to Taiwan. A stray bullet bounced off chef Paul
Prudhomme as he set up a cooking tent in New Orleans, 160
square miles of ice broke off the Wilkins Ice Shelf in
western Antarctica, and thousands of bats in the
northeastern United States were exhibiting a mysterious
condition known as “white-nose syndrome.” The director of
the Idaho Anti-Wolf Coalition, Ron Gillett, was charged
with assaulting wolf advocate Lynne Stone. A park in
Belfast, Northern Ireland, where Hillary Clinton once
promised a group of children that a Catholic-Protestant
playground would be built, remained windswept and
empty. “She was in charge of christening this wee corner
as some kind of peace playground,” said Belfast political
analyst Brian Feeney. “It never made any sense then, and
there’s nothing there today.” Israel “Cachao” Lopez, one
of the inventors of the mambo, died. At his funeral, as an
orchestra performed his Afro-Cuban “Misa de Mambo,” a
statue of Cuba’s patron saint appeared to be swaying to
the beat.

– Sam Stark
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/04/WeeklyReview2008-04-01

“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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