One of these "Only in America" moments. The "American Family Association" publishes an article with the title:
Children's TV Unites to Launch Pro-Homosexual Campaign of 'Tolerance'
SpongeBob, Arthur, Pooh, Bob the Builder, Little Mermaid, Many Others Enlisted in Stealth Effort

This follows the education secratery Margaret Spellings' complaint about, cover your eyes, lesbians, in Buster the bunny.
DOE Director Calls PBS to Account for Pro-Homosexual Cartoon
Ex-Homosexual Evangelist Says 'Buster Bunny's Been Busted' ... and Rightly So

The US "takes down" another UN official, Peter Hansen, head of UNRWA. According to the Guardian:

The Israeli ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, often attacked Mr Hansen, saying he was exceeding his remit and calling him an "Israel hater".

Yet another "only in JesusLand". It would appear that people have complained to the FCC claiming that the opening ceremony for the Athens Olympics were obscene. From the Washington Post:

my children saw an exposed breast during the opening eremonies

also

"How could NBC be allowed to show the male genitalia on national television" during the opening ceremonies.
"I am referring to when the giant white mask that broke apart into a statue of a nude man," the writer explained. (Actually, the writer is referring to the gigantic replica of a Cycladic head, so popular around 2700 B.C., that broke apart to reveal a replica of a Kouros sculpture, all the rage around the 6th century B.C

I enjoyed the LA Times piece on this:

Greece does not wish to be drawn into an American culture war.

An old Barbara Bush quote that I just saw today (March 18 2003) in Mark Crispin Miller's book Cruel and Unusual. It is referenced here. A fine example of compassionate conservatism:

But why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?

The book also reminded me of that golden oldie by Bush the Lesser from 2001:

Now, the American people have got to go about their business. We cannot let the terrorists achieve the objective of frightening our nation to the point where we don't conduct business or people don't shop.

Seymour Hersh reports in the New Yorker on the Bush administration's plans to continue their crusades. Onward Christian soldiers, now to Iran.

“This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign. We’ve declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah—we’ve got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism.”

Why is Israel leaving the Gaza strip? Well one reason may be because it is one of the poorest places on earth. The CIA tells us unemployment is 50% (ranked 185 in the world) and GDP per capita is $600 (ranked 229)

Incidentally, I must commend the CIA factbook in that when talking of the Israeli population they say:

Population:6,199,008
note: includes about 187,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank, about 20,000 in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, more than 5,000 in the Gaza Strip, and fewer than 177,000 in East Jerusalem (July 2004 est.)

Mnost commentators ignore the Jerusalem settlers.

According to the Washington Post:

The hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq has come to an end nearly two years after President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein.

No weapons found. So, no doubt the media will start firing journalists, editors, who unquestioningly parroted the US administration's line taking us up to war. Surely these reporting failures are as important as the errors in the Dan Rather/CBS reporting on the miserable failure's war record.
And what of al the Iraqi scientists and bearcats held in captivity while the search for non weapons went on? When will they be released, and will they be compensated?

From the BBC website:

Former head of UN weapons inspections Hans Blix also said there was no surprise in the announcement.

"We have believed that there weren't any weapons since around May or June 2003. First came David Kay in September 2003 [who said] that he hadn't found any weapons and that was a big sensation - but he thought that there were programmes still," he told the BBC.

"But then came Duelfer last November [who] said that he hadn't seen any programmes, but maybe Saddam would have intended to restart the programme, and there is no evidence of that.

Mr Blix said he assumed it would be natural for the United States to now report their finding to the UN Security Council "because the US took the inspections out of the hands of the UN to undertake it themselves".

Is life in the US so much better than that in "old europe" countries such as Greece, France? Depends on what you mean by life.



Infant Mortality Rate: deaths/1,000 live births

country	total population	male	female
US	6.63	7.31	5.91
Greece	5.63	6.19	5.04
France	4.31	4.83	3.78

Life Expectency

country	total population	male	female
US	77.43	74.63	80.36
Greece	78.94	76.44	81.59
France	79.44	75.8	83.27

Literacy: definition: age 15 and over can read and write

country	total population	male	female
US	97	97	97
Greece	97.5	98.6	96.5
France	99	99	99

GDP/Capita

country	GDP
US	$37,800
Greece	$20,000
France	$27,600

The BBC reports the donor levels for tsunami relief. If you ever hear US-supremassists crowing about their generosity compared to the "euro-weenies" tell them that US=$550m, Germany $1.1bn and the EU $628m.

In the Guardian today, a first hand account from 'liberated' Fallujah. The concluding paragraph:

The US military destroyed Falluja, but simply spread the fighters out around the country. They also increased the chance of civil war in Iraq by using their new national guard of Shias to suppress Sunnis. Once, when a foreign journalist, an Irish guy, asked me whether I was Shia or Sunni - the way the Irish do because they have that thing about the IRA - I said I was Sushi. My father is Sunni and my mother is Shia. I never cared about these things. Now, after Falluja, it matters.

Rahul Maharajan pointed me to this article in Newsweek:

" Following that model, one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions. "

Some while ago there was a Sy Hersh article on the Israeli finger in such a plan...

"Israeli intelligence and military operatives are now quietly at work in Kurdistan, providing training for Kurdish commando units and, most important in Israel’s view, running covert operations inside Kurdish areas of Iran and Syria. Israel feels particularly threatened by Iran, whose position in the region has been strengthened by the war."

Now that Negroponte and Sharon are working together to assure the freedom of Iraqis we can all feel secure and happy.