Wasn’t sure what category this belonged in.  Finally decided fortune cookies are media.

After all, they’re certainly at least as accurate as anything on Fox.

Today’s speech, which turned out to be about as major a release as
"Stealth" (which you’ve probably already forgotten seeing the ads for),
was delivered from… the Naval Academy.

Bush’s speech before that?  An Air Force base.

The one before that?  Yep.  Another air base.

Before that?  An Air Force base.

And before that?  Bush got creative this time, and went with an Army depot.

Uggabugga has put together a detailed graphic of Bush’s public speeches for the last six months.

Il Duce seems to be completely unable to allow any significant chance of making eye contact with anyone who disagrees with him.

It’s pretty creepy.

Bopping around the less traveled bits of the BBC site, I accidentally discovered something wonderful: the BBC Great Lakes Service.

For a moment, I wondered if they were translating the news into
midwestern American dialect, with frequent references to bowling,
high school football, and lake effect snow. 

It is not, however, anything we’d recognize back home on the shores of Lake Erie.

Sorting out what the hell these webpages actually say is the most fun I’ve had all day.  What follows is my attempt to share the experience in a glance.

This fellow, for example, is definitely the Pope.  He’s saying something about how the gatolika kiliziya has renewed its straight-men-only policy regarding
imibonano mpuzabitsina.  And this from a guy who wears Prada shoes.

And then there’s this story,
about how the Bush administration ntiremeza amasezerano ya the Kyoto emissions targets,
dragging its feet again in
Montreal about carbon dioxide wonona ibirere the same way leta
zunz’ubumwe za Amerika has since the damn thing was signed.

Wow, is that ever a cool language.

Of course, simbizi if what I just wrote made any sense.  But usually simbizi squat in general. 

What language is that, you
ask?  Good question.  I’m honestly not sure.  I don’t
see the answer on
the BBC site.  As near as I can Google, it’s Kinyarwanda or maybe Kirundi,
but that’s my ass talking, and it speaks with a thick accent in
English, much less Bantu languages.  Anyway, since the Great Lakes
of Africa would
be
the bit around Rwanda and Burundi and Uganda and such, that’s a
logical guess, and I’ve proceeded accordingly.  But simbizi just about bupkus here, honestly.

I’m sure somebody out there knows.  Uvuga ikirundi?  Uvuga
ikinyarwanda?  Ejo bite?  Warasaze uri umusazi?  Or just mildly nuts?  Urakoze in advance for
any reply.  And yego, I screw up the noun classes.

Anyhow, here’s my point: seeing this makes me suddenly wonder what sort of computer services exist around those
parts.  There must be some, of course, or the BBC wouldn’t bother.  This is something
I’ve simply never thought about.  And then
I realize
how much else I don’t know about the area.  Which is to say: everything.

Like you, I’ve
read about genocide, poverty, dictatorship, and general mayhem.  But
I’ve also read that things are getting better of late.  If one believes
the news, things have improved at least from abject horror to perhaps a
more tolerable level of general misery.  But the truth is, I know
nothing.  And I’m suddenly curious.

So I wonder.  Maybe a kid from the other
Great Lakes will have to find out more and perhaps even visit. 
There’s so much to learn.

Amahoro.

A few kind readers have actually emailed to ask what I’d like to receive as a present.  A general thanks before I send specific ones, and here’s the only response I can think of:

Just tell your friends about the site.  Send links around from articles you like.  That’s all.

Thanks!

PS — I’m using the word "holidays" not out of a general respect for our multifaith society, but specifically because I am part of a left-wing conspiracy to destroy Christmas.  Obviously.

Some Shiites are apparently carrying out sectarian, political murders under the cover of law. 

You might think the word "death squads" is a bit harsh.

Death squads.

And yet Bush will still look you in the eye and tell you that the progress of democracy in Iraq is "amazing."

Speaks for itself.

Still, one last aside.  To those who repeat the current GOP spin that opponents of the war are
motivated by a hatred of Bush or a desire to see America disgraced, I
would like to respond:

I can speak for no one else, but it seems obvious to me that it is the
war which disgraces America.  It is the deaths of tens of thousands of
innocent people which disgraces America.  It is torture which disgraces
America.  It is imprisonment without trial which disgraces America.  It
is the use of chemical weapons which disgraces America.  It is disdain
for international law, the use of military power as a first resort, the
intentional confusion of the Iraqi people with terrorists thousands of
miles away in Afghanistan, and
the corruption of the very word "democracy" which all disgrace America.

As an opponent of the war, I am trying to stop my country from being disgraced any further.

As to hatred, yes, I will confess: I hate the actions of everyone
involved — including Bush and his entire team, who are obviously most
responsible, but also including plenty of Democrats (Biden, Lieberman,
Clinton, etc.) — in creating the current fiasco.  My anger and disgust extends even more intensely to the actions of murderous extremists on all sides — like, say, these death squads, for example — but as they are not elected officials representing and theoretically accountable to the very public which reads this blog, I rarely go into much detail on the point.

I would also eagerly forgive anyone able to admit that what they have done is wrong.  I forgive John Murtha.  I forgive Walter Jones. 
I forgive John Edwards.  Forgiveness is, after all, one of the most important things we can offer.

I could be wrong, but I also believe the majority of humanity would agree.

UPDATE: I should add that since I originally wrote this, John Pike of the FAS, a group this site links to and which I genuinely respect the vast majority of the time, wrote this op-ed which points out that while the U.S. admits using white phosphorous in Fallujah to burn other human beings alive, there was no real foul.

Why? Since the substance was launched from artillery and not dropped from an airplane, it is not technically banned, and the U.S. hasn’t signed the treaty anyway, so there.  Airplane bad.  Artillery good.

I’m sure this must be a comforting last thought as one’s skin peels and burns away: "at least this was not dropped from an airplane, nor used by a signatory to international conventions, and while I am a civilian, I find myself foolishly adjacent to a military target, namely, about half of the entire city at one point or another."

Ahh. Isn’t that better? 

Why, it would seem churlish to complain.

Pike also points out that the particular civilians in the now-famous Italian documentary which kick-started the controversy don’t look like WP victims.  Nope.  They’re just dead civilians.

No problem, then.  I guess.

Even though the U.S. admits it used WP in a way which endangered any civilians trapped in the area, I guess we can ignore these 70+ separate news stories indicating a minimum of hundreds of civilian deaths.

The Red Cross estimate, which they called "likely to be too low" was 800 civilian deaths.  This same article, posted a year ago, includes this (emphasis added):

Oops.

Pike seems to be arguing that if the dead civilians in the documentary weren’t killed by WP, then none of them could have been, in the same way that not pulling a white sock out of the drawer on the first try means there are no white socks anywhere in the drawer.

This is obviously logical reasoning.

So, in the interest of accuracy, I admit that Pike — whom, I emphasize, I respect and agree with the vast majority of the time, current dour sarcasm aside — is right on the specific definition.  I probably should have used the phrase "horrific incendiary chemical fired in a way likely to have mutilated the screaming bodies at least some innocent civilians, even if it’s not strictly defined as a chemical weapon."

I stand corrected.