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AS THE WORLD SQUIRMS Wednesday ~ October 18, 2006
SQUIRMS
ARCHIVE
Oliver
Schopf,
Austria, Der Standard
· Bush Signs Torture/Detention
Bill; Americans Lose Essential Freedoms: George
W. Bush got what he wanted, ostensibly as a tool in his
unfocused "war on terror": By signing into law the Military Commissions Act of 2006, Bush has made it legal for the C.I.A. to
continue operating torture facilities in undisclosed, foreign countries, and for the writ
of habeas corpus to be suspended for individuals who are designated
"enemy combatants" against the U.S. (Designated by whom? That
question remains unanswered.) The law also "establishes
military tribunals that would allow some use of evidence obtained by coercion
[that is, torture], but would give defendants
access to classified evidence being used to convict them." · The
Interrogation of Julia Wilson - Secret Service Grills 14 Year-Old American Artist: Two
super-sized adult male U.S. Secret Service ("S.S.") agents banged
on the front door at 14 year-old Julia Wilson's home last Thursday during school
hours, but Julia wasn't home. Predictably (except to the S.S. agents), the
straight-A student was in her microbiology class at school. But Julia's
mother, Kirstie, was home. When she opened her front door, she was a little
taken aback, not only by the sizes of the agents and the official nature of
the visit, but also by their questions and demeanor after she welcomed them
inside. The S.S. agents told Kirstie that they were investigating her
daughter's role in setting up a MySpace Web page. In particular, they were
troubled because the Web page included the creation of art (pictured above)
that the agents felt was extremely threatening to the life of the President
of the United States. · Is War with
Iran the October Surprise? (By Captain Eric H. May): As
I write, the U.S. Navy's Second Fleet has
dispatched the aircraft carrier Eisenhower, attended by a strike group of
subordinate ships, from its Norfolk home to the Persian Gulf, where it
is due to arrive on Oct. 21. The strike group will link up with other
pre-positioned military assets, and could easily start a war with Iran,
making it part of the ultimate October Surprise. Officers
from the Eisenhower have reached out to the government, military and
media ever since the orders came, protesting that they don't want
to be used to initiate a war with Iran. They assert that this is
against their service oath to the Constitution, which clearly states that
only the Congress -- not the president -- can start a war. Their
distress signal has reached official circles, thanks to a September
article by The Nation magazine. It's a
confirmation of a New Yorker story in the spring, by Seymour Hersh,
alleging that the Pentagon was then putting the brakes on a Bush
administration itching for a war with Iran. Congress pretends not to
notice what is happening, though, either too scared, too involved, or too implicated
to do its duty. It shamelessly gave away its authorization to an
Iraq War in 2002, six months before Bush began the attack, and
hasn't said a word against what may be the preparation for an Iran
War in 2006. It's been many months since I've heard Congress say
it doesn't think Bush has the right to start a new war -- and that means
it thinks he does. · If It Comes To
A Shooting War With China: Scenario
One: America launches 'preventive war' vs China… · America Claims
Unilateral Right To Deny Access To Outer Space If 'Hostile to U.S. Interests'...: President Bush has signed a new National Space Policy that
rejects future arms-control agreements that might limit U.S. flexibility in
space and
asserts a right to deny access to space to anyone "hostile to U.S.
interests." · North Korea
Says Sanctions 'Are War': North Korea says UN sanctions imposed after its
nuclear bomb test are a declaration of war, state media says. Pyongyang also
warned of "merciless" blows against any country infringing on its
sovereignty, the official KCNA news agency reported. · UN
Peacekeepers Tell Israel To Cease Illegal Lebanese Overflights Or They’ll
Open Fire: The
commanders of the French contingent in UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force
in Lebanon) have warned that if Israeli warplanes continue their overflights
in Lebanon, they may have to open fire on them, Defense Minister Amir Peretz
told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee yesterday. · Venezuela in
Win-Win at UN: Though
Venezuela continued to trail Guatemala Tuesday after two rounds of voting,
just being a runner up to the hand-picked U.S. favorite is a considerable
accomplishment in light of the ever-increasing friction between Washington
and Caracas. Raising concerns over alleged U.S. meddling in the election
process, Francisco Arias Cardenas, Venezuela’s ambassador to the United
Nations, said his country could withdraw from council seat contention to end
what he called the Bush administration’s 'extortion' efforts to get close
ally Guatemala on the council. 'We are willing to make the sacrifice on
behalf of everyone to make sure we have a democracy inside the General
Assembly,' he said. · The Gay Old
Party Comes Out (By Frank Rich - The New York Times): The split
between the Republicans’ outward homophobia and inner gayness isn’t just hypocrisy; it’s pathology. Take the bizarre case of Karl Rove. Every one of his Bush campaigns has been marked by a
dirty dealing of the gay card, dating back to the lesbian whispers that
pursued Ann Richards when Mr. Bush ousted her as Texas governor in 1994. Yet we now learn from “The Architect,” the recent book by the Texas journalists James Moore and
Wayne Slater, that Mr. Rove’s own (and beloved) adoptive father, Louis Rove, was
openly gay in the years before his death in 2004. This will be a future case
study for psychiatric clinicians as well as historians. So will Kirk Fordham,
the former Congressional aide who worked not only for Mark Foley but also for
such gay-baiters as Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma (who gratuitously bragged
this year that no one in his family’s “recorded history” was gay) and Senator Mel Martinez of Florida (who
vilified his 2004 Republican primary opponent, a fellow conservative, as a
tool of the “radical homosexual agenda”). Then again, even Rick Santorum, the Pennsylvania
senator who brought up incest and “man-on-dog” sex while decrying same-sex marriage, has employed a gay
director of communications. In the G.O.P. such switch-hitting is as second
nature as cutting taxes.
Patrick Chappatte,
the Geneva daily "Le Temps", Sunday
edition of the Neue Zurcher Zeitung, weekly cartoon International
Herald Tribune 
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