The handcuffs hanging from the burly hired security guard were clearly, intentionally evident. He was checking younger-looking ticket purchasers for age, to protect them from the R-rating of the movie. But he looked big and nasty. I was bringing my 14 year old son, and since he accompanied me, there was no problem...

...I'd gone, wearing a blue shirt, like Moveon.org had suggested. I'd printed out flyers with a message from Michael Moore, that I'd downloaded as a PDF file from moveon.org-- ten of them. I started passing them out before I went out the main doors. The flyers just about flew out of my hands and I was disappointed I didn't have more. People wanted them. They wanted to DO SOMETHING.

As soon as I was finished handing them out, I just kept walking, and went through the main exit doors for the particular theater the movie was shown, which put me in the front area within the movie megaplex. This time there were three big, bouncer-type security guards rushing past me, towards the exit doors. "There are people in there handing out flyers," one of them said urgently, as they rushed to go through the doors to catch .... me. They'd seen people walking out with the flyers I'd handed out.

They were hot for action. Fortunately for me, I'd handed out all the flyers I'd brought. I'd only printed out a small number because I knew my teen-ager might not be thrilled with his activist father. It was a good thing. Getting grabbed or even arrested would not have been a good thing. Civil disobedience that's intentional is one thing, but getting hassled for handing out flyers-- I'm not ready for that yet, even though it REALLY felt like we were in a police state.

Man, that was a disgusting thing to sit through. The contempt and smarmy disregard our government has reached in how it treats us is fucking UNREAL. Even removing Moore's liberal biases aside, just the plain facts will piss you off big-time. And for added fun: tonight's showing at Dublin AMC theatre where the wife and I saw it was attended by STATE TROOPERS. Not in the audience...AT THE DOORS as we entered and exited. We were fucking MONITORED watching it. Probably so some dipshit Repub fan wouldn't start a fight...but it's still the only movie I've ever had that happen at...and I saw "The Color Purple," "New Jack City," "Bowling for Columbine," and "The Last Temptation of Christ" all in theatres.

Enough of these shit-clowns and playing with our lives. I know there are a lot of arguments about how votes don't matter and shit just gets shuffled around each election with no difference...but I'm still going to vote and at least put my two cents' worth in to TRY and change something for the better. If the voting doesn't work, fuck it--I've got four years to keep trying other tactics.

When Ronald Reagan took power in 1981, Americans lived completely different lives. Health care insurance was a given for nearly all working Americans. Downsizing -- the concept of mass layoffs in order to boost a CEO's bonus -- hadn't entered the vocabulary. Neither had outsourcing. Working parents came home from work before sundown and ate dinners with their families. Unions were strong, and the industrialists felt a social responsibility to ensuring their workers' well-being. This was all reflected in the income differential: in 1979, the average CEO earned 30 times his average employees' wage. For some reason no one wants to remember this part of the past -- because it's too depressing, and speaks too obviously to the real decline in America.

Reagan came to office and told the plutocrats to take everything that they wanted. I mean everything. Today, CEOs make 571 times their average employees' wage. Today's male white collar workers in America only earn, in real dollars, six cents per hour more today than they earned in 1973. Health care is increasingly hard to come by, no job is ever safe, Americans work far longer hours and suffer from stress-related illnesses once unheard of.

The clever or well represented—the racial lobbies, defense industry, teachers unions, feminists, AIPAC, big pharma, oil, corporations—suck money from the government. In turn the government gnaws like a hagfish at the entrails of middle-class people moldering in cubicles. These spend their lives in jobs they hate to buy things they don’t want, such as half-million-dollar houses in the suburbs, so as to pay taxes. Elections give them a sense of having a stake in their flensing: The government is their hagfish.

Clearly taking part in this is unwise. What then do you do?

First, and most important, stop regarding yourself as part of government. Government doesn’t concern itself with you; why should you concern yourself with it? The change of attitude provides both relaxation and perspective.

Next, avoid governmental impositions. There are many. Military service is the worst of them. Don’t go. A little man in Washington, whom you have never met and wouldn’t talk to over a back fence, tells you to kill people who have done nothing to you in a foreign country you may never have heard of. Does this seem reasonable?

Finally, cultivate apathy, which is cheaper than Prozac and works better. You do not worry about what you do not care about. I do not propose a depressed scowl at life, but merely a wholesome indifference toward those forces malign and otherwise over which you can have no influence.

The walls and the ground are varnished with fresh blood. In the market a couple of shops are on fire from earlier fighting. A man is hiding behind a pile of empty banana boxes with his eight-year-old son.

That is when we catch sight of a small boy with a stunned look on his face. He says his name is Amjad and he is 11 years old.

"How long you have been here?"

"Ten days. Since my brother was killed. There, at the end of that street."

"And why are you here?"

"To become a martyr like my brother."

I ask him why he wants to die. "We should all die for the sake of our leader!" shouts one of the militiamen who have gathered around us.

Then the RPG session starts, kids aiming at the Americans and hitting whatever target they fancy. As one prepares to fire his RPG, the rusted rocket doesn't launch.

"Come, you can use mine," says a man who is standing by, watching. Helpfully, he goes to his nearby home and returns with his RPG, as if he were lending a neighbour his Hoover.

Then, "They are coming, they are coming!" and everyone starts to run; the 50 or so kids who have gathered to watch the game, break into a sprint. We jump into the first open door, where a man pulls us inside and closes the door.

The house is nothing but two rooms and an open courtyard; home to two families with countless tiny kids. "So they shoot and run, and soon the Americans will come and start breaking into the houses and firing at us," says the man.

THE White House has lodged a complaint with the Irish Embassy in Washington over RTE journalist Carole Coleman's interview with US President George Bush.

And it is believed the President's staff have now withdrawn from an exclusive interview which was to have been given to RTE this morning by First Lady Laura Bush.

It is understood that both RTE and the Department of Foreign Affairs were aware of the exclusive arrangement, scheduled for 11am today. However, when RTE put Ms Coleman's name forward as interviewer, they were told Mrs Bush would no longer be available.

The Irish Independent learned last night that the White House told Ms Coleman that she interrupted the president unnecessarily and was disrespectful.

She also received a call from the White House in which she was admonished for her tone.

And it emerged last night that presidential staff suggested to Ms Coleman as she went into the interview that she ask him a question on the outfit that Taoiseach Bertie Ahern wore to the G8 summit.

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont: ''Hello.''
Vice President Dick Cheney: ''Go fuck yourself.''

Republican SF warns on transporting explosives

THE political wing of the Continuity IRA yesterday issued a warning to the public about the dangers of transporting explosives.

Republican Sinn Fein are worried about the dangers of transporting explosives in Kerry and surrounding counties for construction purposes.

According to a party spokesman, it is a ''tragedy waiting to happen''.

The group want an end to moving explosives by road and for all transportation to take place at night.

''There is a danger associated with moving explosives through a city and indeed through towns and villages,'' said Sean O'Neill, community affairs spokesman for the party.

Quarrying in Kerry as well as current roadworks on the Ennis bypass meant that explosives were being ferried through towns and villages as well as through Limerick city at peak traffic times. ''It is a tragedy waiting to happen and we are now calling for all explosives to be moved during the night or indeed a new way of transporting explosives to be introduced.'' A senior garda in Kerry said he did not wish to comment on the statement.

Unlike the Provisional IRA, CIRA is not observing a cease-fire. CIRA continued its bombing campaign in 2003 with a string of low-level improvised explosive device attacks. A senior CIRA member was arrested, and two powerful RIRA bombs were seized in a June 2003 raid.

   

American soldiers stormed into Sajid Kadhum Bouri al-Bawi's house three hours after midnight on May 17, breaking two doors and rousing the dozen children who live there.

An hour later, family members recalled, the soldiers led a hooded man from the house and told the family they were arresting Bawi. Only after the soldiers left with what appeared to be a prisoner did Bawi's brother find his bloodied body, shot five times and stuffed behind a refrigerator underneath a pile of mattresses.

The US Army is investigating the shooting, and admits that Bawi was shot and killed by an American when, according to the soldiers involved, he tried to seize a soldier's weapon.

A new book by a prominent Washington psychoanalyst says President George W. Bush is a "paranoid meglomaniac" as well as a sadist and "untreated alcoholic." The doctor's analysis appears to confirm earlier reports the President may be emotionally unstable.

Dr. Justin Frank, writing in Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President, also says the President has a "lifelong streak of sadism, ranging from childhood pranks (using firecrackers to explode frogs) to insulting journalists, gloating over state executions ... [and] pumping his fist gleefully before the bombing of Baghdad."

Even worse, Dr. Frank concludes, the President's years of heavy drinking "may have affected his brain function - and his decision to quit drinking without the help of a 12-step program [puts] him at far higher risk of relapse."

Friedman also says the films (Fahrenheit 911) “most indelible moment” comes when Bush, speaking to a group of school kids in Florida, is first informed of the 9/11 attacks.

“Instead of jumping up and leaving, he instead sat in front of the class, with an unfortunate look of confusion, for nearly 11 minutes,” Friedman says. “Moore obtained the footage from a teacher at the school who videotaped the morning program. There Bush sits, with no access to his advisers, while New York is being viciously attacked. I guarantee you that no one who sees this film forgets this episode.”

An allegation that a high-ranking al Qaeda member was an officer in Saddam Hussein's private militia may have resulted from confusion over Iraqi names, a senior administration official said yesterday.

Anyway, this picture is horrifying, not because of the tank but because of the street. Open sewers, streets covered in human waste. Juan Cole has been talking for a while about how bad thing are in this regard, especially in the Shiite slums, but I've never seen such a graphic picture. Next time you read a White House press release about how well the reconstruction is going, flip back to this picture and decide if getting the electricity in Baghdad almost back to prewar levels was worth this kind of destruction. And this is after having quietly seized $2.5 billion of the Ieaqi oil revenue.

Halliburton dug that trench. It's subsidiary, Kellog Brown and Root, trucked in the South Asian excrement required to make it fetid, given that Iraqi shit was deemed not to conform to Coalition Provisional Authority security standards. No Iraqis were employed in this effort, which cost the American people $400,000 dollars. A school was inadvertently painted, and everyone was reminded that Saddam was no longer in power.

You can understand why she's in no rush to eat it - the Ukrainian student has just been served pork fat covered in chocolate.

''It's salty on the inside and very sweet on the outside. It's unusual yes, but it's completely disgusting," says Dasha Khabarova.

Forget deep-fried Mars bar. One of the unhealthiest snacks in the world can now be found in Ukraine.

For years people here have loved pork fat, known as salo.

Normally, small slices of the white fat are eaten with black bread, raw garlic and vodka...

...The former Soviet republic already has one of the highest death rates from heart disease in Europe.

Brian Muller, an Army bomb squad team leader who served on a security detail for President Bush, said he was dismissed from duty after deciding to tell his commander he's gay.

"I didn't do it to get out of a war I already served in a war," Muller, 25, said in an interview. "After putting my life on the line in the war, the idea that I was fighting for the freedoms of so many other people that I couldn't myself enjoy was almost unbearable."

The exodus of soldiers like Muller continues even as concerns grow about military troop strength, according to a new study. Some 770 people were discharged for homosexuality last year under the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

''He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.''

Friedrich Nietzsche

''Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.''

Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)

''What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?''

Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948), "Non-Violence in Peace and War"

''Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.''

Sun-tzu (~400 BC), The Art of War. Strategic Assessments

''How fortunate for leaders that men do not think.''

Adolf Hitler

...something caused TSA to select all three of us for what amounts to a strip search but they didn't tell us that. One of the TSA flunkies was both rude and insistent on being rude, but when I attempted to take his name and badge number I was told that it is against regulations to write down the badge number and if I did that I would not be allowed on the airplane.

...the TSA managed to scratch the lens of my camera, then insist that nothing they did could have done that. All I know is they took my brief case, I saw several of them looking at my camera (an Olympus digital) and later when it was returned not in my brief case the lens had a scratch. The supervisor said they didn't do anything that could have done that, so therefore they didn't do that.

   

He reached around while he was behind me and grabbed around my front pocket. I guess he was going for my flashlight, but the area could have loosely been called "crotch." I said, "You have to ask me before you touch me or it's assault."

He said, "Once you cross that line, I can do whatever I want."

I said that wasn't true. I say that I have the option of saying no and not flying. He said, "Are you going to let me search you, or do I just throw you out?"

I said, "Finish up, and then call the police please."

When he was finished with my shoes, he said, "Okay, you can go."

I said, "I'd like to see your supervisor and I'd like LVPD to come here as well. I was assaulted by you."

He said, "You're free to go, there's no problem."

I said, "I have a problem, please send someone over."

D is for dirty bomb. Did you know a dirty bomb (that's a regular bomb with radioactive materials inside it) could render an area the size of Manhattan uninhabitable?

Just imagine how much trouble you'd be in if you rendered an area the size of Manhattan uninhabitable!

D is also for Department of Homeland Security. Do you know what the Department of Homeland Security would do if someone detonated a dirty bomb? Neither does the Department of Homeland Security!

According to freelance journalist Wayne Madsden, "George W Bush's blood lust, his repeated commitment to Christian beliefs and his constant references to 'evil doers,' in the eyes of many devout Catholic leaders, bear all the hallmarks of the one warned about in the Book of Revelations--the anti-Christ."

Madsen, a Washington-based writer and columnist, who often writes for Counterpunch, says that people close to the pope claim that amid these concerns, the pontiff wishes he was younger and in better health to confront the possibility that Bush may represent the person prophesized in Revelations. John Paul II has always believed the world was on the precipice of the final confrontation between Good and Evil as foretold in the New Testament.

An insect that normally inhabits warm countries has been found living and breeding in the UK, entomologists say.

The green "shield" bug, which attacks a broad range of crops, is usually seen in the Mediterranean, Middle East, Australia, North America and Africa.

Its arrival in Britain is a clear sign of climate change, claim experts from the Natural History Museum, London.

"I'm always reluctant to invoke global warming but it is the only explanation" said curator of beetles, Max Barclay.

I currently have a lot of my son's friends locked up in the garage, and I'm applying electrical charges to their genitals and sexually humiliating them in order to get them to tell me where my son goes after choir practice.

Dick Cheney's counsel, David S Addington, says that's just fine. William J Haynes, the US defense department's general counsel, agrees it's just fine. And so does the US air force general counsel, Mary Walker.

In fact, practically everybody in the US administration seems to think it's just fine, except for the state department lawyer, William H Taft IV, who perversely claims that I might be opening the door to people applying electrical charges to my genitals and sexually humiliating me.

So I'm going to round up all the children in the neighborhood, chain them and set dogs on them. I might accidentally kill one or two - but I won't have intended to - and perhaps I'll take some photos of my wife standing on the dead bodies, and then I'll show the photos to the other kids, and finally, perhaps, I might get to find out where my son goes after choir practice. After all, I'll only be doing what the US administration has been condoning since 9/11.

Insurgents stopped all oil exports from Iraq yesterday by blowing up the one remaining pipeline to the Gulf, and assassinated the head of security for Iraqi oilfields in the north.

In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as ''enemies of the state.''

Worried White House aides paint a portrait of a man on the edge, increasingly wary of those who disagree with him and paranoid of a public that no longer trusts his policies in Iraq or at home.

''It reminds me of the Nixon days,'' says a longtime GOP political consultant with contacts in the White House. ''Everybody is an enemy; everybody is out to get him. That’s the mood over there.''

In interviews with a number of White House staffers who were willing to talk off the record, a picture of an administration under siege has emerged, led by a man who declares his decisions to be “God’s will” and then tells aides to “fuck over” anyone they consider to be an opponent of the administration.

''We’re at war, there’s no doubt about it. What I don’t know anymore is just who the enemy might be,'' says one troubled White House aide. “We seem to spend more time trying to destroy John Kerry than al Qaeda and our enemies list just keeps growing and growing.''

Please be a hoax: Large Insect Found in Iraq Desert We seem to be living in a parallel universe: ''A colleague sent me this photo of a mysterious desert insect, claiming that American troops in Iraq found this and are trying to keep it quiet. I believe the photo to be real.'' What little chance remained of me visiting Iraq has just evaporated. My flesh is crawling.

update: Thanks to all the people sent me info on the insect above. The horrifying ''camel spider'' is real, but the good news is that it's not as big as the photo implies. I still don't want to find it wriggling around in my back yard.

...US soldiers have periodically stormed his hospital looking for wounded resistance fighters. “They come here asking for patients, and are very rough because they shout, cuss, and aim their guns at people,” he said. “We have patients run away when the Americans come, and then we hear that they die at home because they didn’t get their treatment.” According to Dr. Ali, US soldiers also entered the hospital in order to remove posters of Muqtada Al-Sadr from the walls.

Dr. Ali described more of the horrendous conditions the hospital has faced under the occupation like the ongoing power, water, medicine and equipment shortages. Again the other doctors nodded in agreement. “I think the cause of these worse conditions is the Americans,” he said firmly at the end of our interview.

Driving out of the sewage-filled, garbage-strewn streets of Sadr City we passed a wall with “Vietnam Street” spray-painted on it. Just underneath this was written, “We will make your graves in this place...”

According to the terrorists' account, they drive over to a resort called "Oasis," waltz right in and, believe it or leave it...they take a lunch break! I swear to God. Here's the quote: "We went to the hotel, found a restaurant, had ourselves a good lunch and had some rest."

I guess every country has its own style terrorist. And the Saudis are so used to taking it easy (the Philipinos and Indians do all the work), even their terrorists have a siesta right in the middle of a massacre.

And apparently the "Saudi Special Forces" took an even longer nap. They were filmed being choppered onto the roof of the resort next morning, but by that time the terrorists had been gone for hours. Well, I hope the special forces had a good lunch too.

Scientists discover missing link!

 

Pentagon scientists have announced the discovery of a living specimen of Homo Erectus, a primitive hominid believed to be a long lost ancestor of modern humans. The creature has been living under the name of ''Lynndie England'', and has been serving in Iraq.

Apparently unhindered by her sub-normal brain, she has been able to function reasonably well in the modern world. She communicates with her human co-workers with a complex series of grunts and snarls, even delighting in such classic chimp behavior as throwing feces at her Iraqi friends!

Lynndie has even managed to cross breed with one of her human companions, a low-brow by the name of ''Charles Graner''. Mr. Graner is also being examined by the Pentagon's crack team of Anthro-apologists. One administration source who did not wish to be named (it was Don Rumsfeld) said ''Golly. Apparently Mr. Graner is a Neanderthal. How could we have known?''



Evolution at work!

Ms. England's unborn Neanderthal/Erectus hybrid foetus is being closely monitored. The Pentagon fears that it might be a genetic freak prone to senseless violence, in which case it will be drafted into the military on its sixteenth birthday.

Teams of scientists have been searching Ms. England's home town in West Virginia in search of more specimens. According to preliminary reports, up to 90% of her neighbours are members of the Homo Erectus family. Several have been sent to Washington for dissection and further study.

A California National Guardsman says three fellow soldiers brazenly abused detainees during interrogation sessions in an Iraqi police station, threatening them with guns, sticking lit cigarettes in their ears and choking them until they collapsed.

Sgt. Greg Ford said he repeatedly had to revive prisoners who had passed out, and once saw a soldier stand on the back of a handcuffed detainee's neck and pull his arms until they popped out of their sockets.

Where have all the Stingers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the Stingers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the Stingers gone?
Osama picked them every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

A film fan ended up in hospital after trying to imitate Mary Poppins by leaping out of his second floor apartment window holding an umbrella, a news report said on Thursday.

The man, from Chongqing, western China, found that unlike in the Disney film the umbrella did not help him fly and he landed heavily, the South China Morning Post reported.

He later told police he decided to try the stunt because he feared his microwave oven was about to explode.

Last Wednesday, shortly after Flanagan’s opened for business at 11am by a female employee the man entered the premises wearing a balaclava and wielding a hammer. Gardai confirmed that the man threatened the employee, as he demanded money. After taking in the region of €1000 from the till in notes and coins, he locked the employee in the office prior to making a getaway. He then crossed the road to the AIB bank, where he changed the money into sterling and coolly went into the nearby Gin Mill pub for a pint, where he was nabbed by Gardai a short time later.

Finally! New episodes from The Iraq Show More harmless fun from the lads and lasses in Abu G: ...two dog handlers at Abu Ghraib were "having a contest" to see how many detainees they could make involuntarily urinate out of fear of the dogs, according to the previously undisclosed statements obtained by The Washington Post. I pity the poor American guy who was taken hostage by Al Qa'eda. Do onto others...

For nearly three years, White House, aviation and law enforcement officials have insisted the flight never took place and have denied published reports and widespread Internet speculation about its purpose.

But now, at the request of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, TIA officials have confirmed that the flight did take place and have supplied details.

Tricky: Bush or Wiggum? OK, to be fair to the Moron in Chief, I did score 100% (but only because I'm a Simpsons nut). ''Me flunk English? That's unpossible!'' ''It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it.'' Fun fun fun...

Bush, (Hersh) said, was closing ranks, purging anyone who wasn't 100% with him. Said Tenet has a child in bad health, has heart problems, and seemed to find him generally a decent guy under unimaginable pressure, and that people told him that Tenet feared a heart attack if he had to take one more grilling from Cheney. "When these guys memoirs come out, it will shock all of us."...

He said that after he broke Abu Ghraib people are coming out of the woodwork to tell him this stuff. He said he had seen all the Abu Ghraib pictures. He said, "You haven't begun to see evil..." then trailed off. He said, "horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run."

He looked frightened.

   

...recent history has shown that to a certain degree the exact numbers are immaterial. For more than twenty years a hard core of just twenty or thirty members of the Baader-Meinhof gang terrorized West Germany—a stable country with much more sophisticated and reliable police, security, and intelligence services than Iraq is likely to have for some time. Similarly, some fifty to seventy-five Red Brigadists imposed a reign of terror on Italy; the worst period, in the late 1970s, is still referred to as the "years of lead." And for thirty years a dedicated cadre of 200 to 400 IRA gunmen and bombers frustrated the effort to maintain law and order in Northern Ireland.

   

   

Yasser has only days to live. He is 11. His arms are bruised, his legs have wasted away and his gums are clogged with blood - a result of the leukaemia that has ravaged his body...

...In the last 48 hours four children in Yasser's ward have died. Some, perhaps, would have succumbed even with the best treatment available. But doctors say most of them would probably have lived.

They have died because of the filthy conditions, the irregular supply of drugs for chemotherapy and the poor quality of the medicine they are forced to take...

...14 months into a US-led administration, the children are still dying, the supply of drugs is still erratic and the specialists still rely on diagnostic equipment that is decades old.

In the wards the walls are crumbling, bare electric wires hang from the ceiling and dirty water runs down the walls from broken pipes.

With the daytime temperature touching 45C and due to rise further there is no air conditioning and many parents place their children on the floor next to broken windows in the corridor to provide them with some relief.

Only four of the nine wards in the hospital are open at all. "Of course Saddam created this," said Miss Al-Zubaidy. "But the Americans promised us so many times that they would end it. And to date they have done nothing to help at all."

Some of the reason for the children's plight doubtless lies with the Iraqi insurgents. Targeted killings of foreigners have led many companies to flee. Bandit-infested roads mean convoys of equipment are often delayed or never arrive.

But while the Coalition Provisional Authority, which hands over power to a new government at the end of the month, has spent millions on media facilities, roadblocks and security guards, the project to revamp the children's hospital seems to have been quietly forgotten...

..."You westerners always come here, you look, you shake your heads and then you go away. And nothing changes. It's no better here this year than it was last year.

"Always promises, just promises."

Then again, there's nothing uniquely "American" about these criminal policies, and the hypocrisy that attends them. It's how elites have behaved from time immemorial, from the days of the apes: baring their teeth and pounding their chests, ruling through fear and violence, beating, biting, raping, killing--whatever it takes to maintain their perch at the top of the tree. They disguise their savagery--even from themselves--with masks of pomp and piety, with earnest protestations of their "good hearts," their nobility, their enlightenment, their altruism. But what moves them is the spirit of the beast, the blind gut-lust for dominance, the ape-remnants that live on in our brains. They're too weak, too stupefied with corruption to rise above this inherent bestiality.

   

Tomorrow President Bush will call upon Pope John Paul II at the Vatican. After their meeting they will appear before reporters, but the most interesting question may be one that needn't be asked: Will George Bush's knees be knocking when he meets with the pope?

Two days after the painting went up in a front window, someone threw eggs and dumped trash on the doorstep. Haigh said she did not think to connect it to the events at Baghdad's notorious prison until people started leaving nasty messages and threats on her business answering machine.

"I think you need to get your gallery out of this neighborhood before you get hurt," one caller said.

She removed the painting from the window, but the gallery's troubles received news coverage and the criticism continued. The answering machine recorded new calls from people accusing her of being a coward for moving the artwork.

Last weekend, Haigh said a man walked into the gallery, pretended to scrutinize the painting for a moment, then marched up to her desk and spat in her face.

On Thursday, someone knocked on the door of the gallery, then punched Haigh in the face when she stepped outside.

...ridicule of Islam and Iraq dominated the outrageous morning talk shows. Iraq has at least become prime-time comic material. A Boston disc jockey took calls from listeners, mixing real and spoof callers. To the raucous laughter of chums and guests in the studio, one spoofer reminisced about their childhood together: “You went into radio. I joined the Army and went to M.P. school. I'm just back from Baghdad where I kicked some serious butt with them I-rackians.”

But this was mild compared to Don Imus, who found the name of the new Iraqi prime minister, Iyad Alawi, side-splitting. Imus interrupted his newscaster twice: "I give Iyad-Iyad-Iyad about five minutes in that job. I'd rather be Whoopi Goldberg's proctologist."

...Over a hotel breakfast I viewed a five-second CNN item on a bomb in Baghdad as the news crawl at the foot of the screen asked: "Got intestinal worms?" It didn't say what to do about them if you did and I didn't wait for details.

The advertising that followed was bad enough. A new over-the-counter tablet has been released, it seems, to cure the latest national plague, yellow toenails due to fungal infection.

Even the local weatherman couldn't settle for good news: "Pollen count down, mold count up!"

My head was spinning and my stomach was churning. I turned it off and went back to sleep.

Now, at last, with the revelation that Ahmad Chalabi has been passing intelligence information to the regime in Iran, the opportunity presents itself to construct just such a unified theory. The truth, hard as it is to accept, is that Bush is an Iranian agent...

   

In a little-noticed development amid Iraq's prison abuse scandal, the U.S. military is holding dozens of Iraqis as bargaining chips to put pressure on their wanted relatives to surrender, according to human rights groups. These detainees are not accused of any crimes, and experts say their detention violates the Geneva Conventions and other international laws. The practice also risks associating the United States with the tactics of countries it has long criticized for arbitrary arrests.

...Even last week, when he announced that Abu Ghraib will be knocked down he couldn't pronounce the name of the prison. (That could happen to anyone trying to pronounce a foreign word - but only George could mispronounce the word three times, all different mispronunciations.)

This kind of thing led some to conclude that President Little George was like the best haute cuisine sauces - rich and thick.

And when he - a president who didn't win his own election - announced he was going to bomb another country into democracy, well, put it this way: it makes beating a rabbit to death seem pretty normal.

Then, a year ago, the intellectuals of the world sang his praises. You think our George is stupid, they said - well, how could a stupid man oversee such a fast, stunningly successful military campaign? How could a fool turn Iraq into a model country, redraw the map of the Middle East and bring peace to Israel and the Palestinians?

Well, a year later, and in the words of that great philosopher Forest Gump, stupid is as stupid does.

But, is it stupidity?

Here, tentatively, we raise a possibility. Can we be sure it was a bike, and a sofa, that George fell off, and not the wagon?

Last Thursday, transcripts were released that show President Richard Nixon was drunk on the job. At 7.55pm on October 11, 1973, British prime minister Edward Heath rang the White House to discuss the war in the Middle East.

Henry Kissinger told aide Brent Scowcroft the president couldn't take the call. "When I talked to him he was loaded." Heath was told to ring back next morning. On another occasion, when Nixon okayed a proposal, Kissinger said, "I'm not sure he knew what he was approving".

If one US president could conceal his condition, why not another? George did have bottle problems. Does he still occasionally try on the wobbly boots? Is this what happens when he "falls off" sofas and bikes?

This, of course, is mere speculation. George might be as sober as - we were going to say a judge, but perhaps that phrase should be retired, if not impeached.

The issue is unresolved: does booze account for George's behaviour, or is he just as dumb as a bag of hammers?

It's one of the great questions of our time.