The News

Today we’re doing something different. 3N has a sneaking suspicion that many of you are reading only the fluff and the fodder and never getting down to the real news of the day. So today we’ll put that first, because there’s lots going on. But first, a correction. The guy in Oklahoma who was bitten by a rattlesnake was shopping at a Lowe’s Home Improvement store. 3N mistakenly spelled it Loew’s. Twice. Sorry for any confusion.

Cheney Takes Toys, Goes Home

The U.S. Supreme Court continues to waffle over whether or not it will compel Vice President Dick Cheney to release his personal notes from his energy task force meetings in the early days of the Bush administration.

Cheney and his task force were charged with setting this country’s energy policy over the next four years and proceeded to do so, behind closed doors, with energy company lobbyists and captains of industry such as former Enron chief Ken Lay. An old energy man himself, Cheney was accused of bias, collusion and cronyism in awarding contracts and creating a favorable energy policy for his former peers, friends and colleagues. That was three years ago. It stunk then and it’s really starting to stink now.

What’s at issue is the ream of notes Cheney took while in these conferences and the fact that he refuses to let the public have a look-see. The White House is adamant that those records will never be released and has stood behind Cheney all the way. His biggest champion on the bench has so far been none other than old hunting buddy Justice Antonin Scalia. You remember him from a few blogs back, right? Scalia has repeatedly refused to recuse, saying any relationship he may have or have had with the Veep would in no way influence him or sway his decisions. And he is so far the biggest stumbling block to getting these records released, saying the Bush administration has “broad authority to keep matters private.”

So where does this leave us? Predictably, still in limbo. There’s something in those notes the administration desperately wants to keep private and their release could be not only embarrassing, but potentially disastrous to Bush’s reelection campaign. 3N is laying odds that we’ll never, ever see those notes—not in our lifetime at least and certainly not before the November elections.

Rwanda Remembered

3N promised weeks ago to mark the 10-year anniversary of the tragedy in Rwanda and, with the month fast coming to an end, we figured we’d better get to it. Rwanda got scant news coverage in this country when it was in turmoil and its grim anniversary got even less. So buck up and swallow it here.

Ten years ago this month rival tribes Hutus and Tutsis began killing each other in whole-scale fashion in the tiny African nation of Rwanda. Why? Well, the two simply don’t much care for each other and have basically been killing one another since the 1800s. The tribes flirted with peace briefly in the early 90s and brokered a peace accord in 1993. That peace was short lived, however, when on April 6, 1994, Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane was shot down in a missile attack. Hutus blamed the attack on a Tutsi rebel force, the RPF, and the killing began shortly after. Thirteen weeks later, between 500,000 and 800,000 Rwandans lay dead. It was the swiftest, most brutal instance of genocide in history and was performed mostly with machetes and farm implements. And the rest of the world stood by and watched it happen.

What’s particularly infuriating is the fact that the U.S. and U.N. so readily jumped into the fray in the Balkans where Slobodan Milosevic and his party were accused of ethnic cleansing, genocide, etc. Milosevic was a madman, the Western world cried, and the ethnic cleansing there had to be stopped. What we’re rarely told, however, is the fact that the Balkans is home to the Serbian-controlled Trepca Mining Complex, one the richest mines in all of Europe and something the West dearly wants to lay claim to. Had Rwanda had something to offer the West, perhaps our intervention would have been more swift or immediate. Still, conspiracy theories aside, it’s important to remember what happened in Rwanda and maybe be a little more informed and a little more proactive the next time something like this happens. Which it certainly will.

For those of you inclined to read more, check out Philip Gourevitch’s seminal work We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families. It’s grim, awful, fascinating and enlightening. Have it with some warm milk and cookies before bed.

The Fodder

ABC OKs GIs

One last kind of serious item, and this one has to go out today to mean anything. Ted Koppel on tonight’s “Nightline” will devote the entire broadcast to reading the names and showing the photos of all the fallen GIs in Iraq. ABC news is doing the show to “pay tribute to the dead.”

The show is to “remind our viewers—whether they agree with the war or not—that beyond the casualty numbers, these men and women are serving in Iraq in our names, and that those who have been killed have names and faces,” according to “Nightline” Executive Producer Leroy Sievers.

The move has been roundly criticized within media circles as nothing more than a shameless attempt to pull at our heartstrings during the all-important sweeps week. Why else then, media pundits argue, would ABC choose to air the program now rather than, say, Memorial Day? Now 3N is as bitter, jaded and cynical as the rest of them, but can’t we just once take something at face value, sit back and enjoy the ride? This is a nice thing ABC is doing and, whatever their motivations, whatever the airdate, let’s just fucking enjoy it, OK? Watch it if you like.

Brits: Still Dumber Than Us

We’ll wrap it up today with a little jab at our friends in England. Now 3N has no particular gripe with the Brits, but the stories detailing the depths of their collective stupidity just keep coming. And they’re damn funny.

A study by the Wales Post Office found two in five Brits believe “sickles,” the fictional currency used in the Harry Potter books, really exist somewhere overseas. Worse, one in four Brits think they’ll be able to use Galactic “credits,” the official currency of the Star Wars films, the next time they travel abroad. Jesus.

Going further, one in 10 Brits are ready to welcome the country of Luvania into the European Union. Never heard of Luvania? Well, that’s because it doesn’t exist. Researchers threw the fictional country into a list of countries on a survey which asked which nations Brits were most excited about entering the Union. It’s comforting to know that we’re no dumber than our allies, isn’t it?

Have a great weekend—

The Essay

Pushed Under the Carpet

"I also have this belief, strong belief that freedom is not this country's gift to the world. Freedom is the Almighty's gift to every man and woman in this world. And as the greatest power on the face of the earth we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom." –President George Bush, press conference, April 2004

George Bush may not read, but he sure can pray.

Unfortunately, his prayers appear to go unanswered and, as with other holy missions, his zeal, instead of liberating the world, oppresses it.

Endowed as he is with his personal vision of himself as holy liberator to the world, Bush has clearly decided that the faith of the Sunnis is lesser than his own. In his language, they are the insurgents, the rebels and the enemy—and so too are those Americans who do not share his vision.

During the last 20 years, the tension between the Christian right and the rest of us has increased significantly. While I respect the beliefs and views of Christians, I do not believe that a Christian agenda should influence American politics. Perhaps that’s naïve on my part, or perhaps it is inevitable—yet, for the greater part of our history we have managed to maintain the separation between church and state, but this distinction has been nearly obliterated by the Bush administration—let’s make no mistake—Dubya clearly believes he’s acting as God’s agent. Attorney General John Ashcroft, who surpasses even Dubya in his fervor, is still more frenetic in his beliefs: He’s a right-wing Christian who believes in the coming of the rapture (for more info on the rapture check out www.raptureready.com). House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is another fervent Christian.

You might well ask why and how any of this matters.

Here’s one pragmatic instance: When Bush asked Ariel Sharon to pull his tanks out of Jenin in 2002, he received more than 100,000 angry e-mails from Christian fundamentalists and hence never mentioned the matter again, according to George Monbiot, writing for The Guardian. Why would Christian fundamentalists support an aggressive Israeli policy? Because a core group of Christian fundamentalists believe that the Rapture is going to come—but, before it can, the battle at the Temple Mount must be staged.

Sound far-fetched? It might to most of us, but as Monbiot argues, for Christian fundamentalists, who comprise 15 percent of American voters, “the Middle East is not just a domestic matter, it's a personal one: if the president fails to start a conflagration there, his core voters don't get to sit at the right hand of God. Bush, in other words, stands to lose fewer votes by encouraging Israeli aggression than he stands to lose by restraining it. He would be mad to listen to these people. He would also be mad not to.”

Then there’s the issue of bringing democracy and “freedom” to other countries. Let’s deconstruct this notion for a moment. Freedom, U.S. style, is ethnocentric—it doesn’t consider various cultural traditions, religions and belief systems. It presupposes that freedom, like the Holy Grail, is portable and meaningful to all people in the same ways—never mind the fact that in the U.S. our own freedoms continue to be compromised daily—whether or not it is through the guise of the Patriot Act, increased surveillance, smart dust, cameras or, in general, suspension of our civil liberties. But freedom isn’t something you bring to people, like a change of clothing—it’s a belief system that must be embraced and, yes, even intellectualized.

Meanwhile, as I write, we’re bombing Fallujah in the name of freedom. Not including these recent “skirmishes,” U.S. casualties to date are 723 troops in the last 406 days of fighting. These troops have died for Bush’s vision of “God’s work” and—bonus!— helping out Dubya’s friends at Enron, Halliburton and Bechtel.

“Those of us who have been following such things know that the Bush administration is so deeply enmeshed in the energy industry that it's hard to know where one ends and the other begins. Campaign contributions are part of it, but it's also personal: George Bush and Dick Cheney are only two of the many members of the administration who grew rich by relying on the kindness of energy companies,” writes Paul Krugman in The New York Times.

This kind of conflict of interest used to be criminal. Nowadays, it’s simply shrugged off.

Might makes right in this administration—and I’m not speaking only of their inherent Christian convictions. Bush doesn’t believe that he’s accountable to anyone. Not to the Supreme Court, not to Congress and not to the citizenry. In recent days we’ve learned (from Bob Woodward’s new book) that the administration took the funds earmarked for Afghanistan and subverted them to prepare for war with Iraq—without the permission or knowledge of Congress. The phantom Weapons of Mass Destruction have become a painful national joke and all evidence points to the fact that if Dubya could be bothered with a little reading, he’d have known this.

“‘I know he doesn't read,’ one former Bush National Security Council staffer told me. Several other former NSC staffers corroborated this. It seems highly unlikely that he read the national intelligence estimate on WMD before the Iraq war that consigned contrary evidence and caveats that undermined the case to footnotes and fine print. Nor is there any evidence that he read the state department's 17-volume report, The Future of Iraq, warning of nearly all the postwar pitfalls, that was shelved by the neocons in the Pentagon and Vice-President Cheney's office,” writes Sidney Blumenthal in The Guardian.

But, with God on his side, he doesn’t need to read. And with God on America’s side, we are free to Crusade in the name of freedom. –A.M. McNary

The Filler

3N has been letting a lot of good stories sit and collect dust lately, so let’s do some Spring cleaning today and get rid of a bunch. Ready? O.K.

Moan-y, Moan-y

Well the record industry is at it again, griping about how much money it’s losing and this time due to the now-legal downloading of music from stores such as iTunes and Rhapsody. Seems the five major labels think 99 cents is far too cheap and would like to raise the fee to $1.25 or even $2.99 per tune, according to England’s The Register. Industry analysts say the move would be detrimental as consumers won’t pay much more that 99 cents. As one insider put it, an iPod has room for 4,000 songs, but no one is going to spend $4,000 filling it up. 3N is always amazed by the outright hostile attitudes directed towards music consumers by the major labels and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and this latest move really comes as no surprise.

Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun

Now this may be old news but it bears repeating. Seems Starbucks’ dominance of the coffee market may not be solely due to name recognition and the fact that there’s one on every corner. New tests show the chain’s coffee has more than double the caffeine of home-brewed or even other competitor’s wares. That would certainly explain why consumers continue to flock to the stores despite the fact that their coffee is overpriced and bland. For those of us whose bodies are, as The Wall Street Journal so aptly put it, “caffeine addicted,” it’s mana from heaven. 3N once heard executives from RJ Reynolds describe a cigarette as a “nicotine delivery system and nothing more.” Same holds true for coffee, right? Double the caffeine is cool and all, but why not just have two cups from your local mom-and-pop outfit? Starbucks sucks.

What Does This Mean for Dry Cleaning?

In science news, researchers from Tyco’s Fire and Security division have invented a chemical that has all the properties of water with one critical difference; it doesn’t get things wet. Representatives demonstrated the chemical, dubbed Sapphire, on ABC’s “Good Morning America” last week. An amazed Charlie Gibson watched as Tyco reps dunked objects such as books and electronics into a vat of the stuff with no ill effects. Sapphire’s immediate use will primarily be in fire suppression systems in libraries, museums and offices, though Tyco officials say its other uses are presumably limitless. Bizarre.

Science Stymies Scottish Spitters

Speaking of bizarre, bus drivers in Edinburgh, Scotland, are being spat upon at an alarming rate and the city is now issuing them DNA sample kits so they can identify, catch and prosecute offenders. Edinburgh transit officials say spitting is a “fairly common crime” aboard its buses and that drivers have been putting up it with it as they feel it’s simply “a hazard of the job.” Officials went on to say they view spitting as a crime nonetheless and will treat it as they would any other assault. The program is working out well so far as 25 spitters have been charged since the program began, according to The Scotsman.

Tourniquet Needed on Aisle Six

OK, one more. A customer shopping at a Loew’s store in Oklahoma was bitten last week as he pawed his way through the tree section. The man thought he’d been scratched by a thorn though he soon discovered he’d been bitten by a nearly two-foot-long Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake. A relative shopping with the man later caught and killed the snake, according to the Associated Press. Store officials said this was the first such incident but that they are taking the matter “very seriously.” 3N will be sure to keep you posted on just when the multi-million-dollar lawsuit is filed, ‘cause you just know it’s coming.

The News

Let’s get some more old news out of the way. We’ll make them short and sweet.

Hondurans Take Toys, Go Home

Coalition forces were dealt a serious blow in the war in Iraq last week when Honduras announced it would withdraw its forces from the region. Losing the Dutch was bad enough, but the loss of the 370 ferocious Hondurans will certainly spell doom for American efforts to safeguard the country and put an end to the bloody war. In other news, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted he had no idea Honduran forces were even in the region and President Bush conceded that he’d never heard of the country or of Central America for that matter.

Have They Checked eBay?

Still no word on the fuel rod that went missing from a Vermont nuclear plant last week. The highly radioactive rod is still unaccounted for and plant officials have no idea where it could be. Some believe it may still be at the plant while others think it may have been mixed in with a shipment of radioactive waste destined for South Carolina. Why should you worry? Well, the slightest contact with the rod would be fatal and if terrorists get a hold of it they could easily use it to make a so-called “dirty bomb.” The explosion of such a device in a major urban area would kill thousands and sicken hundreds of thousands more. So there’s that. We should also perhaps worry that in the September 12th era our nuclear plant operators are losing things like this. A Connecticut plant lost a similar piece of fuel in 2002 and was fined nearly $300,000 for the oversight. Officials from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission say they’re “very concerned” and called the situation “intolerable,” according to the Associated Press.

Bush’s Buddies Boost Barrels

The Saudi government has assured the Bush administration that it will cut prices for crude oil and boost barrel output around election time so that Americans can enjoy low gas prices and focus their energy on electing the next president—whoever that may be. Awfully nice of the Saudis, eh? They’re just always thinking about us. In an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes,” journalist Bob Woodward said the Saudis fully understand that such a move will benefit Bush’s hopes for reelection. That’s a no-brainer as the Saudi royal family has had close ties with the Bushes for years. Does this piss anyone else off?

Working Towards a Littler House on the Prairie

Finally, in another blow against the little guy, the Department of Agriculture is considering redefining just what constitutes a “family farm” and may enact new standards that would make it more difficult for small farmers to get loans or even stay in business. The proposed new language would define a family farm as one that either brings in less than $750,000 in gross annual income or is not in the top 5 percent of that state’s farms, according to the Associated Press. The move would force some farmers to choose between expanding their business (and risk losing loan money) and staying small in order to continue receiving federal assistance. In any case, 3N has to ask, is there really any need to make life more difficult for the independent businessman? The family farm is damn near a thing of the past anyway and this can only hurt matters. Where does it end with this administration?