Pinging stuff I care about.
Well, kicking the bad guys out of office failed.
So let’s try the more positive step: insist that the so-called “bad guys” stop acting so bad.
Go here and sign a petition to ask the Senators who confirm Alberto Gonzales to ask Gonzales to unequivocally renounce torture as an instrument of American policy.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi reportedly arrested in Iraq
Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi, whom the US occupation authorities declared to be the “target number one” in Iraq, has been arrested in the city of Baakuba, the Emirate newspaper al-Bayane reported on Tuesday referring to Kurdish sources.
This means all the violence is going to stop now, right? Just like it did when we took Baghdad? And killed Uday and Qusay? And captured Saddam Hussein? Everything’s going to be all better now right?
UPDATE: a day later and zero Western sources have picked up on this story, that I can find. Al-Jazeera joins Russia and China and a Kurdish news service in reporting it, is all. If this is any more than a rumor I’d expect someone in the West to be picking it up soon now. So I’m kinda doubtful here.
So I heard on NPR this morning that the deal with the President announcing his “coalition” of nations who are going to work together to help out victims of the disaster — well, the thing is, there already is an organization that helps nations work together to coordinate disaster relief. Duplication of efforts in these things is a serious problem because people die when aid that could have helped them goes someplace where the same aid is already present. That’s why an international agency already exists to coordinate this kind of aid. You know, so people don’t die needlessly and time and money isn’t wasted.
Of course, that international agency is run by the U.N. And the U.N. can’t be trusted, because they thought that invading Iraq was a bad idea and it probably didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. Therefore the U.N. must be sidelined, ignored, and discredited at all costs in favor of alternative organizations which will not inconvenience, disobey, or contradict the Bush Administration.
Even if it means a few extra people in the Indian Ocean basin have to die because aid was badly coordinated.
Thank you George W. Bush. Always protecting us from the dangerous U.N.
Ah well. This is based on a radio report that I heard this morning on npr and I could be misremembering it or misunderstanding the significance of it. I hope so.
I was at a party, talking to Polytropos when he got the good news about his brother in law’s father.
I hadn’t heard about the earthquake yet. Holy cow. My first reaction when told it was 8.9 on the Richter scale was “isn’t that enough to launch a chunk of the Earth into the sky as a new moon?” Turns out there hasn’t in fact been an 8.9-scale quake for over 40 years. Not a joking matter. 23,000 dead at last count. Some inhabited islands still submerged from the 30 foot tsunamis. Puts one’s troubles, and one’s own nation’s troubles, into perspective a bit.
From ABC News:
MOSCOW Dec 20, 2004 — A U.S.-based organization that tracks the progress of political rights and civil liberties across the world said Monday that Russia had fallen to the status of “not free” far behind the democratic nations Moscow sees as its peers.
“Russia’s step backward into the ‘Not Free’ category is the culmination of a growing trend under President Vladimir Putin to concentrate political authority, harass and intimidate the media, and politicize the country’s law-enforcement system,” Freedom House Executive Director Jennifer Windsor said in a statement.
“These moves mark a dangerous and disturbing drift toward authoritarianism in Russia, made more worrisome by President Putin’s recent heavy-handed meddling in political developments in neighboring countries, such as Ukraine,” the statement said.
The Russian Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment on the report.
What? They’re dissing on Bush’s best buddy “Pooty-Poot”? But Bush looked into his soul and saw a kindred spirit! How can this be?