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November 20, 4:56 PM Current issue: December 2009 · Archive
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Scott HortonFrost on the KSM Trial
Mr FishA Cartoon
Ken SilversteinMore on Equatorial Guinea’s Oil-Sotted Crook
Christopher R BehaWeekly Review
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From February 1958.



With the likely demise of Oprah’s book club we are forced to confront the terrible obscurity of today’s famous literary novelists, but is that bad? After all, Junot Diaz is no Jonathan Franzen, and as Tom Cruise reminds us (voicing Richard Price’s sentiments), “checkers sells more than chess”

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On today’s Frost Over the World, I discuss with Sir David Frost and Glenn Sulmasy the Obama Administration’s plan to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and a group of related defendants in federal court in Manhattan. Watch it through the Internet video link here.

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A little more than six years ago, Lt. Col. Dominic “Rocky” Baragona was on his way home. He had a long journey ahead, but he was looking forward to it. Colonel Baragona was serving in Iraq, and his tour was up. He had just spoken with his father by satellite phone, telling him that he’d be in Kuwait the next day to board his flight back, “unless something stupid happens.” Hours later, something stupid happened. A private truck carrying supplies on a U.S. military contract careened three lanes across a highway and struck the humvee in which Colonel Baragona was traveling. He died in a gruesome traffic accident. After an investigation, the military concluded that the incident involved serious negligence by the contractor but no criminal wrongdoing. Colonel Baragona’s family filed suit against the Kuwaiti contractor in federal court in Georgia. They secured a default judgment, and then the contractor came back to court to reopen the case.

The contractor got the judgment vacated on the grounds that the court had no in personam jurisdiction to handle the suit. Watching the lawyers for the contractor high-five one another was almost as painful an experience as the first word of his son’s death, Mr. Baragona said. “They bragged, ‘We never even had to notify our insurer.’” The contractor had been required by U.S. contracting rules to take out insurance to cover just such an event–not that it mattered, since no American court could require them to pay. Neither could any court in Iraq, it turns out, because of Order No. 17, issued by Paul Bremer as American proconsul, which had granted contractors immunity from process in Iraqi courts. The contractor, it turned out, had been completely immunized for its wrongful acts. [MORE . . .]

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From November 1958.



Review of reviews of Nabokov’s The Original of Laura; advice needed: “I masturbate while I sleep. Is this normal?” (SFW, but includes traumatizing photo of barefoot dude crashed on couch); recent excruciating literary sex scenes (“First Pegeen stepped into the contraption.”)

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From November 1958.



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John R. MacArthur is publisher of Harper’s Magazine and author of the book You Can’t Be President: The Outrageous Barriers to Democracy in America. This column originally appeared in the November 18, 2009 Providence Journal.

If President Obama has ever heard of William L. Shirer, chances are it’s in connection with Nazi Germany. Nowadays, you can’t make assumptions about what people under 50 know and don’t know, but it’s a safe bet Obama recalls Shirer’s most famous book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, even if he hasn’t read it. [MORE . . .]

From Gawker:

A tipster, who works on Rodeo Drive, says Teodoro Nguema Obiang, the Ferrari-driving big spender who plunders Equatorial Guinea’s oil wealth is dating a family member and just dropped $70,000 in one store on clothes for her. The insider, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of ending up in the infamous Black Beach prison in Equatorial Guinea, said Obiang regularly spends up to $200,000 in a day on frequent LA shopping sprees.

[MORE . . .]

Marian Wang works and writes for Mother Jones. She previously was a freelance investigative reporter and blogger for The Chicago Reporter, the Chi-Town Daily News and ChicagoNow. Wang’s recent post, “Where Are All the Lady Bloggers?”, cited a report from Technorati that found that sixty-seven percent of bloggers are men, prompting her to ask: “Is there a glass ceiling in the blogosphere?” I recently spoke to her by phone and via email about the post, and the broader issue of gender and journalism. This interview was edited for length and clarity.

1. Based on the Technorati survey, women are badly underrepresented in the blogosphere. What do you think accounts for that online gender disparity? [MORE . . .]

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From January 1952.



Ideas that you might have liked to have thought of yourself: a chair that’s like a “really excellent lover”; vaporized marijuana; powdered gas; and “flat-rate” sex

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Former Bush Administration Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey addressed the Federalist Society only hours after his successor, Eric Holder, announced his plan to bring a group of Guantánamo prisoners up on federal charges in Manhattan. He offered harsh words, claiming that the trials would prove a “circus.” Such attacks on the nation’s criminal justice system have become routine on the political right.

Take the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol, who responded to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s promise to bring the Fort Hood shooter to justice with these words: [MORE . . .]

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It will be interesting to see if the State Department, which by order of a presidential proclamation and act of congress is required to bar corrupt foreign officials from American territory, will finally take action on Teodoro Nguema Obiang. As I reported here yesterday, the Justice Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have compiled a laundry list of gross misconduct on Obiang, the son of the dictator of Equatorial Guinea, a major oil producer and site of billions in investments by U.S. energy firms.

Obiang, sometimes known as Teodorin, earns the equivalent of about $5,000 monthly as minister of agriculture and forestry (or the minister of chopping down trees, as some of his critics call it). Yet documents from the investigation show that he has used shell corporations to move tens of millions of dollars into the U.S., helping him buy a $35 million estate in Malibu, a $33 million plane and a fleet of luxury cars. “[I]t is suspected that a large portion of Teodoro Nguema OBIANG’s assets have originated from extortion, theft of public funds, or other corrupt conduct,” said a Justice Department document from 2007. A second document from that same year, produced by ICE, said, investigators hoped to “identify, trace, freeze, and recover assets within the United States illicitly acquired through kleptocracy by Teodoro Obiang and his associates,” and to “deny safe haven in the United States to kleptocrats.” [MORE . . .]

Attorney General Eric Holder announced that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other accused September 11 plotters would be tried in federal court in lower Manhattan. “It is fitting that 9/11 suspects face justice near the World Trade Center site,” said New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, adding that the city had sufficient resources to safely hold the trials. “I'm concerned,” said former mayor Rudy Giuliani, “that we no longer believe we're at war with Islamic terrorists.” Five other detainees will be tried before military commissions.1 2 3 4 President Barack Obama traveled to Shanghai, China, where he addressed a town-hall meeting attended by members of the Chinese Communist Party Youth League, whose questions were pre-screened. The president described himself as “a big supporter of non-censorship.” The meeting, which the White House called the “marquee event” of Obama's trip to China, was not mentioned in official Chinese government news broadcasts. References to Obama's remarks on Chinese websites were removed within hours. 5 Officers from Beijing's Industry and Commerce Administration stopped the sale of “ObaMao” merchandise showing Obama dressed as Mao Zedong.6 The Republican National Committee said that its health-insurance plan would no longer pay for abortions.7 The Cheesecake Factory agreed to pay $345,000 to six male employees who were sexually harassed by other male employees, the number of Americans lacking dependable access to food reached its highest levels on record, and a New York woman who cut off her father's penis and burned it on the stove began taking cooking classes in jail.8 9 10 [MORE . . .]

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From October 1923.



Palin doesn’t believe that “thinking, loving beings originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea”; an interview with Cormac McCarthy; a good typo: “Even though Egypt is geographically close to East Africa, where one of the four strains of leprosy comes from, DNA from a 4th century mommy shows traces of the European strain.”

Shakespeare and porn (Much Ado About Humping and A Midsummer Night’s Cream); & more Shakespeare; & the perfect combination of motorcycle tricks and guitar-playing

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In 2004, George W. Bush issued Presidential Proclamation 7750, which barred corrupt foreign officials from entering the United States and ordered the State Department to compile a list of banned individuals. Three years later Congress approved a complementary measure that said the State Department should take special heed to bar officials when there was “credible evidence” to believe they were involved the theft of natural resources revenues. Last July, the State Department issued a report noting that corruption eroded “confidence in democratic institutions” and that fighting it was a central tenet of American foreign policy. The report also stated that the Obama administration would “vigorously” enforce 7750, better known as the Anti-Kleptocracy Intiative, and give particularly close scrutiny to visa requests from individuals involved in corruption involving natural resources.

Why, then, is a notoriously crooked official from oil-rich Equatorial Guinea allowed to enter the country and to hold vast millions in assets here? It’s certainly not because the U.S. government is unaware of the scandalous activities of Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue. Previously undisclosed documents — obtained by London-based Global Witness and provided to Harper’s Magazine — reveal an extensive federal investigation of Obiang Mangue was underway at least two years ago. Global Witness’s report on the U.S. investigation into Obiang Mangue is available here. [MORE . . .]

From the Washington Post:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and an assortment of national business groups opposed to President Obama’s health-care reform effort are collecting money to finance an economic study that could be used to portray the legislation as a job killer and threat to the nation’s economy, according to an e-mail solicitation from a top Chamber official.

The e-mail, written by the Chamber’s senior health policy manager and obtained by The Washington Post, proposes spending $50,000 to hire a “respected economist” to study the impact of health-care legislation, which is expected to come to the Senate floor this week, would have on jobs and the economy.

Step two, according to the e-mail, appears to assume the outcome of the economic review: “The economist will then circulate a sign-on letter to hundreds of other economists saying that the bill will kill jobs and hurt the economy. We will then be able to use this open letter to produce advertisements, and as a powerful lobbying and grass-roots document.”

The New York Times reported over the weekend that dozens of statements from members of congress printed in the Congressional Record during the House debate on health care “were ghostwritten, in whole or in part, by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech, one of the world’s largest biotechnology companies.”

“E-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that the lobbyists drafted one statement for Democrats and another for Republicans,” said the newspaper. “Genentech, a subsidiary of the Swiss drug giant Roche, estimates that 42 House members picked up some of its talking points — 22 Republicans and 20 Democrats, an unusual bipartisan coup for lobbyists.” [MORE . . .]

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From June 1923.



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A short while back I noted here that Gulnara Karimova, daughter and henchwoman of Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov, had recently hosted rock star Sting in Tashkent, the nation’s capital. Sting took in a fashion show and other events with Gulnara, whose father’s regime killed one prisoner by immersion in boiling water, and in 2005 slaughtered hundreds of protesters in the town of Andijan. “The scale of this killing was so extensive, and its nature was so indiscriminate and disproportionate, that it can best be described as a massacre,” Human Rights Watch said in a study of the events at Andijan.

Now Gulnara has hired an American firm to bring bloggers to “a gala event in Tashkent,” to quote an email that Chris Stone, vice president at Atlas International Partners, has been sending to invitees. The email says that the event will “showcase the work of young Uzbek artists” and is being sponsored by the Forum of Culture and Arts of Uzbekistan Foundation, which is chaired by Gulnara Karimova. Here’s an excerpt from the email: [MORE . . .]

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December 2009

THE GENERAL ELECTRIC SUPERFRAUD
Why the Hudson River Will Never Run Clean
By David Gargill

THE MASTER OF SPIN BOLDAK
Undercover with Afghanistan’s Drug-Trafficking Border Police
By Matthieu Aikins

MERMAID FEVER
A story by Steven Millhauser

UNDERSTANDING OBAMACARE
By Luke Mitchell

Also: Dave Hickey and Wendell Berry

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