Universal plagues

Older not wiser

Yup, it’s been another eventful week on Planet Earth (we haven’t had a moment’s peace since the end of the cold war).

Sonia Gandhi stormed to a stunning pollster-defying victory in India, then refused to accept the job of prime minister. More pictures, still and moving, of abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison made their way into the media, further shaming the US as it refused to apologise for allegedly bombing a wedding party in a re-run of the Afghan campaign. Israel drew worldwide condemnation for firing mortars at a demonstration in Rafah refugee camp, part of a huge operation sweeping through Gaza in which countless houses were demolished and dozens of lives lost.

Meanwhile, somewhere below Gran Sasso mountain in Italy, in an underground laboratory, Italian and German scientists hit us with another bombshell. Apparently, the universe might be a billion years older than we previously thought.

In a shock to the solar system, so to speak, the universe might be 14.7 billion years old, not the infantile 13.7 billion we all had clocked.

As if 13.7 hasn’t been bad enough! Now we’ve got another billion years to account for. The Diary has its work cut out.

In laymen’s terms, it seems the atomic reaction that produces energy inside stars happens a lot slower than you might think (though doesn’t everything?).

If we can just prevent wiping ourselves out, we may be around for a lot longer than expected. Who knows, in another billion years, we may have solved the Israel-Palestine question?

Though don’t go holding your breath.

Tectonic shifts

Sticking with the bigger picture…

The New Scientist ran a story this week under the headline “Canada is on the up – US is going down”.

The Diary’s ears pricked up. Will Canada replace the US as the world’s lone, pre-emptive, superpower? We will all soon be eating maple syrup and watching blockbuster movies about man’s eternal fight with the bear?

Well, no. We’ll never have it that good.

This is all about the vertical movements of the North American plate. Some parts of Canada are said to be moving upwards about 10mm a year, leaving the US in their wake.

It might not sound like much, but do the math. What is 10mm x 1 billion?

Brood X

Things just ain’t goin’ so good for the ole USofA these days.

There is the real chance of the worst prejudices of your most radical anti-American nut becoming universally de rigueur. Mankind appears to have lost its beacon of hope. This week, Thomas Oliphant wrote in the International Herald Tribune, “After two weeks roaming the four Nordic countries – Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland – to exchange views with colleagues, elites in and out of government, and citizens, I find no way to overstate the rejection of Bush’s leadership.”

As if this weren’t enough, a BBC report this week began like this: “A swarm of cicadas has emerged after 17 years underground in the eastern US. Trillions of the insects will blanket the landscape in a frenzy of breeding, before dying en masse in June.”

This is getting biblical! Stuff like this ever happen under Clinton, did it?

Brood X, as the plague of cicadas is being referred to (think grunge, think reality bites, man), is swarming across fourteen US states. “The sidewalk is littered with bodies,” enthused Jenna Jadin, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Maryland on BBC News Online.

Ironically, this particular type of cicada (known as “periodical”, due its rare appearance) is wholeheartedly committed to the doctrine of multilateralism.

“Safety in numbers” is the guiding philosophy of this “dull-witted” insect. In the words of Cole Gilbert, an entymologist from Cornell University: “They need gigantic numbers to swamp their predators and survive.”

Anyone told Dubya?

Everything is fine

Apparently not.

Dubya is from the school of “everything is fine” – a phrase that dominates Washington’s neo-con discourse, the Diary is told. In his inimitable fashion, the Prez pigeon-stepped over to Capitol Hill this week to spread his optimistic message.

200 House and Senate Republicans showed up to listen to Bush’s “45-minute pep rally” (New York Times) or “35-minute pep rally” (Washington Post). There were reassurances over Iraq, the federal budget and the small matter of November’s election.

“Mr. Bush took no questions from the lawmakers, and left without speaking to reporters roped off in a corner of the Capitol’s basement,” the NYT reported.

“Behind closed doors, Bush gave a 35-minute stump speech,” the Post said. “When he finished, the participants filed past a bank of microphones to announce that they were unified in support of Bush and that there had been no dissent expressed at the meeting. Bush took no questions.”

Still, when he did talk, here’s what the President promised:

• Iraqis get power of Iraq on June 30, no question
• The new temporary government in Iraq will not be subject to American control
• John Negroponte, new US Ambassador to Iraq, is not the next L. Paul Bremer
• He will personally lay on the Dubya charm at a series of forthcoming international summits “to try to help drive world opinion”.

The mere fact that Dubya bothered to trot over the hill seems to have been enough to persuade Republican lawmakers that this is their man. “I thought he looked really good this morning,” said Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, focusing on the important issues.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi was predictably unimpressed. “The emperor has no clothes,” she said. “When are people going to face the reality? Pull this curtain back.”

(As George Soros writes in this week’s edition of openDemocracy: “[If] President Bush gets re-elected we must ask ourselves the question: ‘What is wrong with us?’”)

Representative Thomas M Reynolds of New York, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, was predictably unimpressed with Representative Pelosi. “If Nancy Pelosi has nothing to offer our troops, who are living and dying thousands of miles away, besides taunting them by saying they are dying needlessly and are risking their lives on a shallow mission,” he said, “then she should just go back to her pastel-coloured condo in San Francisco and keep her views to herself.”

As Todd Gitlin identifies, this “rich, privileged, out-of-touch Democrat” theme is going to be an abiding feature of this year’s contest.

We know where this is going. “We are in the middle of a war and the middle of a political campaign,” said House Speaker J. Dennis Haspert. “Mrs. Pelosi’s comments were meant to inspire her political base, but who else do they inspire?”

“Her remarks are now advancing a blame-America-first attitude that [Senator John] Kerry himself has come dangerously close to advocating,” moaned Marc Racicot, campaign chairman to President Bush.

Free speech, anyone?

The Post put it best. “I don’t care to answer that question,” said Senator George Allen, when asked if Bush had taken any questions.

“The President was not there to educate,” explained Senator John E. Sununu.

You don’t say!

Quotes of the week

“We must not allow the narrow margin of victory to become a source of greater conflict in society.”
Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian on his controversial victory in last month’s presidential election by a margin of 0.2%. Read excerpts of his inaugural speech.

“I said, ‘I am Osama bin Laden but I am disguised.’”
Saddam Saleh Aboud, a victim of abuse by US military personnel at Abu Ghraib, describing how he would say anything to his torturers because he “would prefer to be dead”.

“No-one should have expected a cakewalk and that’s no reason to go wobbly now.”
US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz on Iraq.

“We just didn’t realise how totally different the culture is in Middle Eastern countries.”
Professor Samuel Huntington on Iraq.

Contact the Diary: dominic.hilton@openDemocracy.net