Barbara Bush's mouth

Mother nature

A pair of articles in America’s leading papers this week attempted to enlighten us to the logic that is George W. Bush. They are worthy of note.

The first was by David E. Sanger in The New York Times. Sanger’s theory is that Bush has recently disappeared back into the shadows. Cheney and Powell are the frontmen, while the Prez lets his lassoo swing loose on the ranch. The reason? Well, “he is not in the mood to answer questions”, and “he senses that unscripted comments could make a politically uncomfortable moment even worse”. Best to keep out of sight.

Dubya has avoided responding to the series of high-profile criticisms of his Iraq policy, including from many members of his father’s administration. When he has appeared in public, Sanger says, “he has stuck closely to last spring’s well-worn scripts”. According to some close to the President, he was not eager to journey back to Washington. A bad summer looks set to be followed by a worse autumn. “The most withering assessment,” Sanger judges, “came just as Bush was corralling the presidential dogs, Spot and Barney, to make the trip back to Washington. (Barney seemed particularly reluctant to leave his Texas freedoms, and had to be carried aboard Air Force One).”

That’s right, blame the mother. Barbara’s caustic “wit” is the stuff of legends. In 1984, as her husband sought the vice-presidency, she described his challenger Geraldine Ferraro as a word that “rhymes with rich”.

Ouch! (It must be said that BB insisted later that she had meant “witch”). Mmm…

Millbank believes that, over the last year, Dubya has adopted the habits of his momma, casting aside the diplomatic sluggishness of George H.W. Bush, his more languid papa.

Apparently, this Oedipus connection explains some of Bush’s more memorable moments over the last twelve months. “From his mother I see that feistiness, that street-smart person who has a good nose for people, a good political nose,” says nasal-obsessed Bush friend April Foley. Examples of momma’s influence include Bush’s Ground Zero promise: “The people who knocked down these buildings will hear all of us soon!”

But what of that “affability and Texas back-slapping”? A bizarre piece by Dana Millbank in the Washington Post on the weekend sought to get to the bottom of Bush’s innate charm. Millbank’s thesis is that the President’s “sharp tongue”, “stubborn will”, “reliance on instinct”, “black-and-white morality”, “impatience” and “congenital inability to suffer fools” – in short, his likeable qualities – “has publicly demonstrated … that George W. Bush is his mother’s son.”

And what would the camel have to say about that?

But even better, in what was described by Rich Bond, who ran Bush Snr’s 1980 primary campaign in Iowa, as “classic, classic Barbara Bush”, Dubya’s priceless war-cry “When I take action, I’m not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt,” was referenced. As was his extraordinary moment in Paris when he verbally hit out at an NBC reporter who dared speak to Chirac in French: “The guy memorizes four words and he plays like he’s intercontinental.”

All Barbara Bush apparently. According to Rich Bond, “She cuts to the chase.” Said “one of the president’s closest friends”, “His mother came out over the past year.” Now there’s a comment worthy of being called a Bushism.

One Corea So it really is a game of two halves? Football, the game without boundaries, brought together two foes this week in a friendly match with deep political ramifications.

In the World Cup stadium in Seoul, South Korea and North Korea played each other for the first time in nearly ten years. They called it the “Reunification Games”. By all accounts, it was an emotional event.

Sixty thousand fans packed into the stadium. Most were dressed in blue – the colour of the joint flag that the players carried into the stadium. There were no national anthems – the teams sang Arirang, a Korean folk song – but plenty of cheering. “Jo Kuk Tong Il” chanted the crowd (“Unified Fatherland”).

North Korea boycotted the World Cup this year, in which the South Koreans surpassed all expectation and finished fourth. The Communist North was gracious enough to congratulate the country with whom it is still technically at war. The North will also participate in the Asian Games, to start in the Southern port city of Pusan in a few week’s time.

Oh, and the result? A politically correct nil-nil draw. The Diary, while not at the game, judges this a fair result.

Violence stops play

Meanwhile, in Montreal, former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was forced to cancel a speech after violent protests.

Netanyahu was due to talk at Concordia University. Pro-Palestinian protestors clashed with police. One side threw chairs, the other used pepper spray.

Netanyahu was not impressed. He accused the protestors of being against democracy and in favour of terrorism. “They’re supporting Saddam Hussein, they’re supporting Arafat, they’re supporting bin Laden,” he said.

Protests followed Netanyahu to Toronto and were prevalent in Winnipeg. The former Prime Minister was branded a “war criminal”. Said former Concordia University student David Battistuzzi, “This man said in 1989 Israel should have taken advantage of the Tiananmen Square massacre to expel the Palestinians from Israel. He’s a violent man … this man is a war criminal.”

He concluded, “There’s no free speech for hate speech.”

(Source: BBC)

Life began in Scotland?

Life. Not just a defunct magazine.

There are some weeks when one actively seeks to find the headlines from a billion years ago. This week, with its terror, war, train wrecks and more, was one of them.

So here goes. Dr. Tony Prave, a modern-day geologist at the University of St. Andrews, has found some evidence that life colonised the land more than a billion years ago. This is far earlier than previously thought.

The source of the evidence lies in the Torridon region of North-West Scotland. Dr. Prave has discovered ripples that show the sand was being held together by a bacterial film, known as biocrust.

As BBC Online explains, a billion years ago, and before the Johannesburg summit, “the Earth was undergoing a series of cataclysmic changes. The composition of the atmosphere was fluctuating wildly. Climatic conditions went from extreme to extreme. Primitive life had already taken hold on the Earth and consisted of single-celled organisms like bacteria and was confined to the vast seas that even then covered most of the globe.”

And still the US sent Colin Powell as their summit rep..

The thing is that scientists, that demographic so famed for their numerical inaccuracy, had figured that the land was bereft of life until hundreds of millions of years later (and in some cases, many might say, even longer).

But the flakes, what Praves called “little ripples on the surface of the rock”, seem to suggest that “the invasion of the land had begun far earlier than we realised, by a billion years ago it was already underway.”

Dr. Praves’ Torridon findings are written up in the journal Geology. “The fascinating thing about bacteria is that today they seem to have an uncanny ability to live just about everywhere,” Prave told BBC Online.

Even North-West Scotland…

Quotes of the week

“It’s better to have only a few friends than to have a lot of sycophants.”
President Jacques Chirac on French “criticism” of the US. From an interview in The New York Times.

“Just given the fact that it’s a one year anniversary, we’re going to be on our toes.”
Ari Fleischer, White House Press Secretary.

“The Palestinian people stand with all their might against all types of terrorism, whether it is committed by a state, a group or individuals.”
Yasser Arafat, in a major speech this week to the Palestinian Legislative Council.

“These used to be the days you gloried in as a New Yorker. Now there’s a pall. New Yorkers see these cool, sharp blue days and always run the risk of having those events flashing before their eyes.”
Marc Jahr, described by the Washington Post as “a moustachioed Brooklyn resident.”

“Great men who deepened the roots of faith in the hearts of the faithful and reaffirmed allegiance to God and torpedoed the schemes of the crusaders and their stooges, the rulers of the region.”
A description of the 11 September hijackers, by a voice thought to be that of Osama bin Laden. The recording was broadcast by al-Jazeera.