Cash for carnage
Before announcing the thirty-day suspension of Iraqi oil exports this week, against the Zionist entity and the American aggressive policy and not against anyone else, Saddam Hussein had made a less high-profile policy shift.
Last Wednesday, Don Rumsfeld announced that the Iraqi President had increased the amount offered to relatives of Palestinian suicide bombers.
Once, a suicide bombing was worth only ten thousand dollars. But the Israeli action over the last few weeks has obviously made Saddam more generous. He is now offering a twenty-five thousand dollar reward to the families of these martyrs.
He is pleased with the idea, Rumsfeld said, and is promoting it in the region.
and the world responds
Meanwhile, the shockwaves from Israel/Palestine continue to reverberate throughout Europe. In Cyprus, Greek and Turk Cypriots demonstrated together about the events in the region. From Italy, the Diary gets reports of a proliferation of anti-Semitic graffiti. In France, Paris witnessed a pro-Palestinian march on Saturday and a pro-Israeli march on Sunday.
As synagogues were petrol-bombed in Southern France, an estimated one hundred and fifty thousand people marched in Paris to denounce the recent attacks on Jewish schools, cemeteries and places of meeting and worship, the day after a march of an estimated eighteen thousand pro-Palestinian activists. Similar marches took place across France.
Its an indisputable fact that there have been anti-Semitic acts, alas, and they must be prevented, punished and severely condemned, said President Chirac. But I dont believe that the French people are becoming anti-Semitic.
Tolls of execution
Amnesty International reported this week that worldwide executions doubled in 2001. Over the year, at least 3,048 state executions took place in thirty-one countries. In 2000 the figure was 1,457.
This is the official total those reported by governments. The human rights organization admitted that it is impossible to give a complete total, as many countries keep the true numbers of those executed secret. It is the highest annual total since 1996, and the second highest in twenty years.
The main culprit is China. The national strike hard campaign against crime has done wonders for the execution figures. 2,468 were killed at the hand of the Chinese government in 2001 1,800 in a four-month period more than all the other countries combined.
China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the US accounted for ninety per cent of those executed, Amnesty said. They recorded 139 executions in Iran last year, compared to 75 in 2000. But the US had decreased its killing from 85 in 2000 to 66 in 2001.
Good news? Theres some. three more countries added their names to those who outlaw the death penalty Chile, Bosnia and Yugoslavia. Turkey reduced the scope of the death penalty through a constitutional amendment. Pakistan commuted the death sentences of approximately one hundred child offenders.
Will you still need me/feed me?
Nevertheless, despite the best efforts of the Chinese government, people are living longer, and soon the older crowd (sixty-plus) will outnumber the young. So concluded the opening day of the Second World Assembly on Ageing in Madrid.
The UN estimates that by 2050, the number of people over sixty will rise to two billion. Presently, the figure stands at a measly six hundred million. Those over eighty will jump to three hundred and fifty million from todays seventy million. By then, people over fifty will outnumber children up to fourteen years old. Give it another fifty years or so, and bingo will be an Olympic sport.
But not even this assembly is free from the curse of Israel/Palestine. The fifty-page international plan for ageing has two contentious references to older people under foreign occupation. This has been taken as a veiled attack on Israel. It goes to show that you can never retire from politics.
Oh go on then, I did it
Former Andersen accountant David Duncan changed his mind again this week, admitting that he did shred documents relating to Enron, and told others to do the same.
Media Unspun provided an enjoyable synopsis of the u-turn. Duncans plea of guilty to the obstruction of justice is just the latest take on the scandal. He was fired from Andersen in January on the charge of paper-shredding. By March, the accountants had backtracked a bit, saying Duncan didnt really break the law, but was just a bit naughty. Now the firm is in a real bind: For months, Mr. Duncan has contended that he had no intent to commit any criminal act today, (he) told a completely new and different story, came a convoluted official statement.
Duncan is now the prosecutions star witness. But as Media Unspun remind us, the DOJ is interested in how exactly Andersen ran itself (they quote the NYT assessment, byzantine finances). Now Duncan faces only one charge, although theoretically this could mean a $250,000 fine and ten years in jail (Media Unspun have the Wall Street Journal reporting that Duncan swayed noticeably on his feet at the mention of jail time).
But hell probably do OK for himself. One attorney is reported as telling the Los Angeles Times that Generally, the first guy gets the best deal.
Muddy waters
Spare a thought for enthusiastic schoolboy Eliot Gosko. Eliot ran into trouble with airport officials in Aspen, Colorado, when they discovered his drinks container was full of an unidentifiable liquid. Since 11 September airline passengers have to prove that they are not carrying any dangerous liquids on board. With Eliot, the security check was direct: he was made to drink it.
Unfortunately for him, the container held a sludgy sample of river water that he had collected for a biology project at his Pennsylvania high school. The BBC reports that He had been visiting his grandparents and had hoped to gain extra credits for bringing back the sample.
If we had known it was creek water there is no way we would have asked him to take a swig of it, FAA spokesperson, Mike Fergus is reported as saying, presumably in his defence. As the Diary went to press, Eliot had missed two days of school since his unfortunate run-in. He is complaining of nausea, and is now undergoing tests for stomach illness, and giardia, infection through untreated water.
Chante Mallard
Declining social capital?
Weird News Online, the Diarys favourite source of in-depth geo-political analysis, has come up trumps again with a story from the Dallas Morning News.
Indifferent isnt enough. Cruel isnt enough to say. Heartless? Inhumane? Maybe weve just redefined inhumanity here, said Tarrant County assistant district attorney, Rich Alpert. The subject under review is one Chante Mallard, who, while driving high on ecstasy and drunk, ploughed into Gregory Glenn Biggs, a homeless man. With his body lodged into her windshield, Ms. Mallard drove home and parked the car in the garage.
Two or three days later, Mr. Biggs, still lodged in the windshield, died of loss of blood. Chante then took the body out of her windshield and dumped it in a park. He was found by the police a few days after that, and they charged the woman with murder. In her confession, Ms. Chantel said that she had been into the garage a few times to check on the condition of her patient, and to offer him her apologies, but had refused to get him any help, despite his cries.
God bless civil society.
Quotes of the week:
We have resolution fatigue.
Anonymous US official, referring to the futility of UN resolutions of peace in the Middle East.
A woman whose zest for meeting people, taste for a tipple and passion for horse racing had made her a welcome and available person in British life through abdication, world war, widowhood and family discord.
Warren Hoges moving tribute in the New York Times to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, who was buried this week.
Contact the Diary editor: dominic.hilton@opendemocracy.net
