Weekly Review

By Roger D. Hodge

Israel continued to demolish Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip as part of "Operation Rainbow"; a tank and a helicopter gunship opened fire on protesters in Rafah and killed at least 10 people, including several children; military officials expressed "deep sorrow over the loss of civilian lives" and said that only warning shots had been fired.¹ American forces attacked what survivors said was a wedding party in Iraq, near the Syrian border, and killed at least 43 people, including 12 women and 14 children; U.S. military officials said they had attacked a safehouse for foreign fighters and that there was no evidence of a wedding; confronted with video footage that strongly supported survivors' claims, an official said: "There may have been some kind of celebration. Bad people have celebrations, too."² Israel's justice minister, Yosef Lapid, a Holocaust survivor who lost his father and grandmother to the Nazis, denounced the Sharon government's latest round of home demolitions in the Gaza Strip and said: "When I saw a picture on the TV of an old woman on all fours in the ruins of her home looking under some floor tiles for her medicines — I did think, 'What would I say if it were my grandmother?'" The comment was criticized for its implied comparison of the Israeli army to the Nazis. "We look like monsters in the eyes of the world," Lapid said. "This makes me sick."³ Evidence continued to emerge that the United States has systematically used torture on prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq, and in its secret detention centers around the world; one⁴ former Iraqi prisoner described being sodomized with a nightstick; another said he saw a prison interpreter raping an Iraqi boy as a female soldier took pictures.⁵ Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld banned digital cameras and camera phones from U.S. military bases in Iraq.⁶ A military lawyer testified that he was told that Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez was present at some of the torture sessions at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, and⁷ Iraqi torture victims were beginning to file lawsuits against the U.S. seeking damages.⁸ General Anthony Zinni, the former commander of all U.S. troops in the Middle East, said that the invasion of Iraq was "the wrong war at the wrong time with the wrong strategy."⁹ Halliburton, it was reported, has been getting paid for hauling empty trucks across the Iraqi desert.¹⁰ The Pentagon finally decided to stop paying Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress $335,000 per month; a few days later¹¹ U.S. forces raided Chalabi's offices in Baghdad, smashed furniture and photographs and carried away documents and computers.¹² Oil prices were still near $40 a barrel, and OPEC rejected a Saudi Arabian proposal to increase oil production.¹³ Workers found a rocket launcher near a train station in Atlanta, Georgia.¹⁴ A New York jeweler was shot in the head as he walked down Sixth Avenue in Manhattan; Candace Bergen was at the scene and said, "This is the first time I've seen brain matter."¹⁵ President Bush fell off his mountain bike.¹⁶

German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was slapped in the face at a campaign rally, and¹⁷ Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain was pelted in the back with condoms filled with purple flour as he was speaking in front of Parliament during a question-and-answer session.¹⁸ Manmohan Singh was sworn in as India's first non-Hindu prime minister.¹⁹ A land mine blew up a bus in Kashmir; Hizbul Mujahedeen, a terrorist group based in Pakistan, took credit for the attack.²⁰ Pakistan was readmitted to full Commonwealth membership, less than five years after General Pervez Musharraf took power in a coup.²¹ Colombian rebels blew up a disco, and a²² bomb blew up outside a McDonald's in Istanbul.²³ In Paris, the roof of a new terminal at Charles de Gaulle International Airport collapsed and killed several people.²⁴ The U.S. Homeland Security department was preparing to award a $15 billion contract for a massive electronic-surveillance and data-mining system to track foreign visitors to the United States, and transit²⁵ police in Boston confirmed that they will begin stopping passengers on the Boston T for identity checks as part of a new national rail security plan.²⁶ The General Accounting Office concluded in a report that the Bush Administration violated federal law when it produced simulated news spots for local news stations on the new Medicare law; the GAO said that the spots were "covert propaganda."²⁷ Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California filed suit against a toy company that makes a bobblehead doll in his image; the company also makes dolls of other political figures, as well as celebrities such as Jesus Christ and Anna Nicole Smith.²⁸ Colorado outlawed lawsuits against fast-food companies by fat people.²⁹

Scientists discovered prions in the muscle of a sheep infected with scrapie; experts were very quick to say that this does not necessarily pose any danger to humans who eat lamb, even though scrapie prions are believed to have caused mad cow disease. A prion expert at the National Institutes of Health predicted that "within the next year, somebody will make a big splash by finding it in the muscles of cattle and the beef industry will go crazy."³⁰ British investigators who studied samples of human biopsies estimated that almost 4,000 Britons could have mad cow disease prions in their tonsils.³¹ The Humane Society complained that racing dogs in Florida were being given cocaine, and³² British intelligence agents in World War II at one point planned to train pigeons to carry bombs or biological weapons. "Pigeon research," said one memo, "will not stand still; if we do not experiment, other powers will."³³ Texas executed a schizophrenic man.³⁴ It was noticed that members of the Bush Administration have been going around the country taking credit for programs even as the president cuts or eliminates them from his budget.³⁵ A club in Barcelona was offering to implant a radio frequency ID chip in VIP members' arms so that they don't have to wait in line to get in or use money to pay for drinks.³⁶ French ecologists discovered that the metal bands used to tag penguins hamper swimming and breeding and surviving.³⁷ The EPA approved an air-pollution rule on formaldehyde emissions based on a cancer risk model created by the Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology; the new standard is 10,000 times weaker than the EPA's previous regulation for such emissions.³⁸ Researchers at the Mayo Clinic found new evidence for the existence of nanobacteria.³⁹ Astronomers were looking for shadows of the Big Bang, and⁴⁰ NASA astrophysicists said that measurements of X rays from 26 galaxy clusters confirmed that dark energy, a kind of mysterious repulsive gravity, dominates the universe.⁴¹ American researchers found that giving aspirin and other pain relievers to infant rats adversely affects their libido later in life, and the⁴² Food and Drug Administration banned homosexuals from being sperm donors.⁴³ Graveyards were filling up in South Africa.⁴⁴