Arizona Legislators Veto Pistol-Packin’ Kindergardeners

Author’s note: This post turned out to be sadly prophetic.

I read in yesterday’s International Herald Tribune that Arizona state senator, Karen Johnson, has sponsored a bill–which the Arizona State Judiciary Committee approved last week–that would allow people with a concealed-weapons permit to carry firearms at public colleges and universities.

This is a self-styled “right-wing wacko’s” solution to the ongoing epidemic of shootings in American high schools and on college campuses. Granted, a single right-wing wacko (RWW) does not make a summer, but since she was elected, it’s only fair to suppose that she is seconded by thousands of other RWW’s out there in the Arizona sun without their hats. The Herald Tribune adds, “She initially wanted the bill to cover all public schools, kindergarten and up, but other lawmakers convinced her it stood a better chance of passing if it were limited to higher education.” If you ask me, that “other lawmakers” euphemism refers to other elected RWW’s with their respective RWW constituencies.

The Crisis, the Poor, the Nobel Laureate and the President

For more than a year now we’ve been subjected to a barrage of news relating to the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States, and how it created a financial emergency first that country, then the rest of the world. The crisis began in late 2006 with a worrying rise in the rate of home foreclosures in the US. During the following year it spread around the world, affecting not only the real-estate and banking businesses, but also stock markets, consumer confidence, and the general health of the economies of countries around the world. The impression given by the media was that, by defaulting on their mortgages, the poor people of the United States were dragging the world into a recession.

Is Condi Rice Initiating Her Plea Bargaining Already?

All the British papers are up in arms because they’ve just found out that the United States’ “extraordinary renditioning” aircraft did touch down on British soil. Reporters from The Times, Francis Elliott and Frances Gibb, affirm:

British facilities were used by the US to transport terrorist suspects at least twice, despite repeated government denials – including by Tony Blair – that the UK had any involvement in extraordinary rendition flights.

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, admitted that two US flights carrying terrorist suspects refuelled at the airbase on the British Indian Ocean territory of Diego Garcia in 2002.

In a statement to the Commons he apologised to MPs for having to correct previous denials, blaming a US “administrative error” that had only just come to light. Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, had expressed her “deep regret” at the error and had phoned him to apologise on Wednesday.

Mark Pallis of The Guardian, details how the Brits were, er, finessed back in 2005 when foreign secretary Jack Strawaffirmed before the British foreign affairs select committee in December of that year:

Unless we all start to believe in conspiracy theories, and that the officials are lying, I’m lying and that behind and that behind this there is some kind of secret state in league with some dark forces in the US, and we believe Secretary [of State Condoleezza] Rice is lying, there is simply no truth in claims that the UK has been involved in rendition.

Funny that Mr. Straw should have expressed it so eloquently and so explicitly, as that is exactly what we believed, though we have not been able to confirm it until now.

Yo, United Statesians, Listen Up!

A Lesson in Linguistic Geography for the People of the United States

The land mass properly called “America” extends from the northern tip of Greenland to Cape Horn (properly Cabo de Hornos) at the southern tip of Chile and, besides the United States and its territories, Greenland, and Chile, includes Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Canada, Cayman Islands, Clipperton Island, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Greenland, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Martinique, Mexico, The Netherlands Antilles, Nicaragua, Panama, Saint Barthelemy, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Martin, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Falkland Islands, French Guiana, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

None of these countries or territories arrogates to itself the right to call itself “America,” though all have the very same credentials as the United States to do so. To pretend that “America” or “American” refers exclusively or even principally to the United States, is gravely erroneous, and when the people of the United States do it it’s impolite. This is the most elementary geography and most everybody in the world is aware of it except the people of the United States themselves, who have seen fit to co-opt the common name for the peoples of two entire continents for their own private use. This belies a cocktail of ignorance and arrogance which is considered inappropriate in advanced democratic societies.

Is It a Bird? Is It a Plane? No, It’s the Machine Again

Faster than a speeding pork barrel, more powerful than executive privilege, able to leap tall ballot boxes in a single bound. There in the sky, is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Superdelegate!

Now that the contest for the Democratic nomination is intensifying we see the term “superdelegate” popping up more and more in the media, but I have yet to see an explanation of how some of the Democratic Convention delegates became “super.” It seems that there are delegates and delegates and that some of them are more equal than others, and not precisely because they eat more spinach.

First stop, the Wikipedia: “’Superdelegate’ is an informal term for some of the delegates to the Democratic National Convention, the quadrennial convention of the United States Democratic Party.” According to the online encyclopedia, the superdelegates are not elected in primary elections nor party caucuses, but are delegates ex-oficio by virtue of being Democratic incumbents or ex office holders. They are what the Democratic Convention website refers to as “unpledged and pledged party leaders and elected official delegates,” whatever that means. We shall refer to them here as “The Team from the Machine.” There are 796 of them, making up roughly 20% of the total number of delegates to the Democratic Convention.

U.S. Resorts to Pistachio Diplomacy–Take Cover!

I intended to introduce you Robert Fisk this morning, but this journalist who has given us the finest, most reliable Middle East coverage for decades will have to wait till next time. Breaking news demands our attention.

According to Madrid’s El Mundo newspaper this morning, Sal Emergui, their correspondent in Jerusalem, filed the following report yesterday: “The United States and Israel are daily forging an alliance to confront Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadineyad’s nuclear project, but the pistachio question has provoked certain differences. This is not a joke. The Bush government has protested to Israel through various channels accusing them of consuming large quantities of Iranian pistachios.” (My translation.)

You Can’t Say That!

After years of simmering indignation with the direction the United States was taking, both at home and abroad, last year I finally started writing The You of My Song: Notes from a Voluntary Exile. Not that I thought I was going to add any new revelations to the story, as the facts are all there for anyone who wants to look them up. I did, however, think I could contribute one new element to the discussion: a fresh point of view, that of a person who rejected the American dream at the end of the sixties, and went looking for something better. I found that alternative in Spain. That’s a long story, which the book deals with in detail. Here, though, I want to remark on an interesting by product which came along with my move across the Atlantic and longtime residence abroad: a clearer view of the country which I left behind.