Category: The Current Situation

From the AP Wire:

An American writer and two hikers emerged smiling from the Colombian jungle Friday after being escorted from a war zone by right-wing paramilitaries but leftist rebels still held captive two other foreign journalists.

Robert Young Pelton, a freelance writer and TV reporter, said he and his companions, Megan Smaker and Mark Wedeven, were not mistreated. He said he held nothing against the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, which encountered the trio in a jungle-covered region along the Panamanian border, for removing them from the area when fighting broke out.

“Even though we were not happy about being kidnapped or being kept away from our families and our jobs, they had a reason to do so,” Pelton, author of a guidebook called ‘The World’s Most Dangerous Places, told a TV reporter.’ “After all, it is their country and their war.”

IMMEDIATE ATTENTION NEEDED : HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL

FROM: GEORGE WALKER BUSH
202.456.1414 / 202.456.1111
FAX: 202.456.2461

DEAR SIR / MADAM,

I AM GEORGE WALKER BUSH, SON OF THE FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH, AND CURRENTLY SERVING AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THIS LETTER MIGHT SURPRISE YOU BECAUSE WE HAVE NOT MET NEITHER IN PERSON NOR BY CORRESPONDENCE. I CAME TO KNOW OF YOU IN MY SEARCH FOR A RELIABLE AND REPUTABLE PERSON TO HANDLE A VERY CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS TRANSACTION, WHICH INVOLVES THE TRANSFER OF A HUGE SUM OF MONEY TO AN ACCOUNT REQUIRING MAXIMUM CONFIDENCE.

I AM WRITING YOU IN ABSOLUTE CONFIDENCE PRIMARILY TO SEEK YOUR ASSISTANCE IN ACQUIRING OIL FUNDS THAT ARE PRESENTLY TRAPPED IN THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ. MY PARTNERS AND I SOLICIT YOUR ASSISTANCE IN COMPLETING A TRANSACTION BEGUN BY MY FATHER, WHO HAS LONG BEEN ACTIVELY ENGAGED IN THE EXTRACTION OF PETROLEUM IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND BRAVELY SERVED HIS COUNTRY AS DIRECTOR OF THE UNITED STATES CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY.

IN THE DECADE OF THE NINETEEN-EIGHTIES, MY FATHER, THEN VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, SOUGHT TO WORK WITH THE GOOD OFFICES OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ TO REGAIN LOST OIL REVENUE SOURCES IN THE NEIGHBORING ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN. THIS UNSUCCESSFUL VENTURE WAS SOON FOLLOWED BY A FALLING OUT WITH HIS IRAQI PARTNER, WHO SOUGHT TO ACQUIRE ADDITIONAL OIL REVENUE SOURCES IN THE NEIGHBORING EMIRATE OF KUWAIT, A WHOLLY-OWNED U.S.-BRITISH SUBSIDIARY.

MY FATHER RE-SECURED THE PETROLEUM ASSETS OF KUWAIT IN 1991 AT A COST OF SIXTY-ONE BILLION U.S. DOLLARS ($61,000,000,000). OUT OF THAT COST, THIRTY-SIX BILLION DOLLARS ($36,000,000,000) WERE SUPPLIED BY HIS PARTNERS IN THE KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA AND OTHER PERSIAN GULF MONARCHIES, AND SIXTEEN BILLION DOLLARS ($16,000,000,000) BY GERMAN AND JAPANESE PARTNERS. BUT MY FATHER’S FORMER IRAQI BUSINESS PARTNER REMAINED IN CONTROL OF THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ AND ITS PETROLEUM RESERVES.

MY FAMILY IS CALLING FOR YOUR URGENT ASSISTANCE IN FUNDING THE REMOVAL OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ AND ACQUIRING THE PETROLEUM ASSETS OF HIS COUNTRY, AS COMPENSATION FOR THE COSTS OF REMOVING HIM FROM POWER. UNFORTUNATELY, OUR PARTNERS FROM 1991 ARE NOT WILLING TO SHOULDER THE BURDEN OF THIS NEW VENTURE, WHICH IN ITS UPCOMING PHASE MAY COST THE SUM OF 100 BILLION TO 200 BILLION DOLLARS ($100,000,000,000 – $200,000,000,000), BOTH IN THE INITIAL ACQUISITION AND IN LONG-TERM MANAGEMENT.

WITHOUT THE FUNDS FROM OUR 1991 PARTNERS, WE WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO ACQUIRE THE OIL REVENUE TRAPPED WITHIN IRAQ. THAT IS WHY MY FAMILY AND OUR COLLEAGUES ARE URGENTLY SEEKING YOUR GRACIOUS ASSISTANCE. OUR DISTINGUISHED COLLEAGUES IN THIS BUSINESS TRANSACTION INCLUDE THE SITTING VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, RICHARD CHENEY, WHO IS AN ORIGINAL PARTNER IN THE IRAQ VENTURE AND FORMER HEAD OF THE HALLIBURTON OIL COMPANY, AND CONDOLEEZA RICE, WHOSE PROFESSIONAL DEDICATION TO THE VENTURE WAS DEMONSTRATED IN THE NAMING OF A CHEVRON OIL TANKER AFTER HER.

I WOULD BESEECH YOU TO TRANSFER A SUM EQUALING TEN TO TWENTY-FIVE PERCENT (10-25 %) OF YOUR YEARLY INCOME TO OUR ACCOUNT TO AID IN THIS IMPORTANT VENTURE. THE INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILL FUNCTION AS OUR TRUSTED INTERMEDIARY. I PROPOSE THAT YOU MAKE THIS TRANSFER BEFORE THE FIFTEENTH (15TH) OF THE MONTH OF APRIL.

I KNOW THAT A TRANSACTION OF THIS MAGNITUDE WOULD MAKE ANYONE APPREHENSIVE AND WORRIED. BUT I AM ASSURING YOU THAT ALL WILL BE WELL AT THE END OF THE DAY. A BOLD STEP TAKEN SHALL NOT BE REGRETTED, I ASSURE YOU. PLEASE DO BE INFORMED THAT THIS BUSINESS TRANSACTION IS 100% LEGAL. IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO CO-OPERATE IN THIS TRANSACTION, PLEASE CONTACT OUR INTERMEDIARY REPRESENTATIVES TO FURTHER DISCUSS THE MATTER.

I PRAY THAT YOU UNDERSTAND OUR PLIGHT. MY FAMILY AND OUR COLLEAGUES WILL BE FOREVER GRATEFUL. PLEASE REPLY IN STRICT CONFIDENCE TO THE CONTACT NUMBERS BELOW.

SINCERELY WITH WARM REGARDS,

GEORGE WALKER BUSH

Switchboard: 202.456.1414
Comments: 202.456.1111
Fax: 202.456.2461
Email: president@whitehouse.gov

…you might want to read what Dwight Meredith wrote about Bush II’s proposal to cap lifetime pain-and-suffering awards at $250,000.

It is beyond dispute that pain and suffering is a real, actual, legitimate loss. The hard question is how much money is required to compensate for a given amount of pain and suffering. There is no scale that actually balances pain on one side of the scale and money on the other side. The Bush administration suggests that a lifetime of pain and suffering result in compensation of a maximum of $250,000.

Perhaps we can put that amount into perspective by comparing it with other values our within society.

In 1999 Ken Lay dispatched an empty Enron Jet to France to fetch his daughter Robin home from Nice. The cost of that flight was was $125,000 or one half of what the Bush administration considers to be the value of a lifetime of pain and suffering.

The Bush administration’s latest tax cut proposal would have reduced Dick Cheney’s taxes by $220,000 in the last year he worked at Halliburton. That tax relief is approximately 90% of what the Bush administration believes to be the damages for a lifetime of pain and suffering.

Former Tyco executive Dennis Kozlowski spent $2.1 million on a birthday party for his wife (more than Mr. Bush feels is fair for 8 people having to live while hooked up to tubes unable to feed themselves).

A lifetime with brain damage caused by medical negligence, according to the administration, should result in compensation for pain and suffering that is less than the cost of a 2002 Rolls-Royce.

CNN reports:

The author of the travel book “The World’s Most Dangerous Places” was kidnapped with two other Americans near the Colombia-Panama border, police said Tuesday.

Author Robert Young Pelton, 47, of Redondo Beach, Megan A. Smaker, 22, of Oakland and Mark Wedeven, whose hometown wasn’t released, were traveling Saturday through a lawless area used by Colombian guerrillas and paramilitary groups for drug and arms trafficking, authorities said. Pelton was researching a story for National Geographic’s Adventure Magazine.

Pelton’s website has some more details.

Everyone is blogging-wide on this, so I’m obliged to make note of this. One part reality television and many parts Sartre, Kafka, The Prisoner, and good old-fashioned social paranoia, Mafia has become the parlor game of choice in the convention scene. Mafia has now hit the NYC literary set and as they say, hilarity ensues.

Novelist Jonathan Lethem has become an evangelist in literary circles for a party game called “Mafia” that involves lies, deceit, and heavy doses of social paranoia – all of which are readily available at any serious Manhattan cocktail party. The game is played with twelve people, three of which, unbeknownst to everyone else, are designated “mafia.” The mafia attempt to turn the rest of the group against each other as mafia suspects are voted out of the group. People that have played with Lethem find it a little disconcerting. The skill at psychological manipulation required to play well (“social torture,” The Observer calls it) greatly exceeds that of the average Manhattan-variety social climber. The true protagonists are not to be trusted.

Can’t wait for this to hit the LA entertainment industry folks.

In his latest For The Record program David Emory draws together the various 9/11 threads he’s been been weaving and pulls back to the macro-level view of The Current Situation. The upshot:

Presenting the view that the attacks of 9/11 represent a fusion of the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Reichstag Fire, the FTR programs on 9/11 compare the situation of the United States to that of France in the late 1930’s and 1940’s. In Mr. Emory’s opinion, the United States is facing a combination of attack from a hostile foreign power (the Underground Reich’s Islamofascist forces) and domestic subversion from an allied Fifth Column. That Fifth Column (centered around the Bush administration) derives from structural economic relationships and infiltration of the national security establishment through the promotion of anti-Communism as a vehicle for conquest.

Even if you don’t see a Nazi under your bed daily and are in denial over the creeping fascism, give this program a listen. RealAudio files are available on the main FTR page. The program text is worth reading too.

Quite possibly my favorite headline of the month. Instead of a soccer game ending in a riot, a soccer game spontaneously erupts at a demonstration. Miguel Octavio writes:

On Monday some people barricaded a highway in Caracas. From one of the barrios nearby some pro-Chavez people came down and it appeared there might be a confrontation. There was none, and the picture above shows Chavistas and opposition supporters shaking hands at the end (I can’t tell which side is which!). Well, today the opposition barricaded the same highway, the Chavistas showed up and guess what?. They ended playing an improvised game of soccer in the middle of the highway, which reportedly the Chavistas won 3-2. That is the Venezuela we all remember until Hugo Chavez showed up in his coup attempt in ’92. We want it back!

A friend from Cleveland emails…

The ‘My President is Jimmy Hoffa’ stickers are old hat by now, but seen yesterday written in grime on the back of a delivery truck:

“Santa is a Teamster”