The Week in Review
Jul. 6th, 2004 09:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
raybearIf I put my personal weekly horoscope up here, I might as well put the world's weekly horoscope up as well.
WEEKLY REVIEW
In a furtive ceremony held two days ahead of schedule in
order to pre-empt violence, the United States transferred
"sovereignty" to Iraq. About 140,000 American troops
remained in the country, with no mechanism in place between
the two countries to govern the troops, and 150 Americans
stayed on in Iraqi ministries as advisers. Of the 2,300
construction projects promised by coalition forces, fewer
than 140 were underway at the time of the transfer of power.
Outgoing proconsul L. Paul Bremer warned that Iraq's path to
democracy would be messy, and noted, "It wasn't very pretty
around here either between 1776 and 1787." In response to a
note from Condoleezza Rice announcing Iraq's new status,
President Bush wrote: "Let Freedom Reign!" Three days later,
insurgents fired rockets from a bus and a pickup truck that
hit two central Baghdad hotels, and a mortar attack on a
military base near the city's airport wounded eleven U.S.
soldiers. Court proceedings began at "Camp Victory," the
American base near Baghdad, against Saddam Hussein, who
identified himself as the current president of Iraq, and
eleven members of his administration. "You know that this is
all a theater by Bush, to help him win his election,"
Hussein observed. He was read criminal charges covering
thirty years, including the 1988 gassing of Kurds in
Halabja, which he recalled hearing about "on the radio." The
U.S. said that Hussein had not provided any useful
information while in custody, though he explained that he
had his army invade Kuwait in 1990 to keep them busy.
Observing that "a state of war is not a blank check for the
president," the Supreme Court ruled that both foreign
prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay and so-called enemy
combatants held in the United States can use the American
legal system to challenge their detention. Four American
soldiers were charged with fatally pushing an Iraqi off a
bridge in January for breaking a curfew. Scientists found
that the sneakiest primates have the biggest brains.
President Bush's approval rating fell to its lowest point,
42 percent.
In Afghanistan, Taliban fighters killed fourteen unarmed men
for registering to vote. President Hamid Karzai begged NATO
to send security troops to the country, and to "please
hurry" in advance of September elections, but his request
was rejected. More than 2,100 Florida residents were found
to be wrongly included on a list of ineligible voters. Nine
members of the House of Representatives asked the United
Nations to monitor the November elections, and two
conservative groups were caught illegally promoting Ralph
Nader's presidential candidacy in Oregon. The Bush-Cheney
campaign asked church-going volunteers to provide church
membership directories to state campaign committees, raising
questions about whether the directive violates the
separation between church and state. A Mexican farmer upset
about not getting his party's nomination to run for the
state legislature put on a crown of thorns and nailed
himself to a wooden cross outside the state's electoral
office. While in Turkey for the NATO summit, President Bush
met with religious leaders and thanked them "for being so
faithful to the Almighty God." The pope expressed outrage
over the sacking of Constantinople by Christian crusaders in
1204. The FDA approved the use of blood-sucking leeches for
medicinal purposes. Lonely people were buying robotic
fireflies.
Hillary Clinton promised that if John Kerry wins the
election, Bush's tax cuts will be eliminated: "We're going
to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."
The Supreme Court ruled that a federal law designed to
shield children from Internet porn cannot be enforced,
because it likely violates the First Amendment. American
military officers were worrying that promotional cans of
Coca-Cola including cell phones and global positioning chips
could be used to eavesdrop on classified meetings. The
Cassini spacecraft orbited Saturn and transmitted the first
pictures of the icy rings circling the planet, and the
Hubble Space Telescope discovered a hundred new planets
orbiting stars in the Milky Way. Chiquita was busy
engineering bananas that taste like different fruits. The
French government reported that the number of cows infected
with mad cow disease in the past thirteen years is 300 times
higher than previously suspected, with nearly 50,000
infected animals entering the food chain because the
epidemic had gone undetected. A 132-pound Japanese man ate
53 hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes. "I think he has proven,
once again, that he is one of the finest athletes of any
sport in the world," concluded a spokesman. A dead woman
was suing the late Dr. Robert Atkins for giving her
inadequate cancer-treatment advice. Little boys in Utah were
selling lemonade for $250 a glass to offset a potential $14
million judgment against the Boy Scouts for starting a
wildfire. Experts warned that witches' broom disease and
frosty pod disease could devastate chocolate supplies in
coming years, and female rice farmers in Nepal were plowing
their fields in the nude to please the rain god. Colin
Powell sang and danced to "YMCA" for foreign ministers at a
conference on Asian-Pacific security. A Hindu ascetic was
busy rolling his way 800 miles from India to Pakistan to
promote world peace.
--Margaret Cordi
WEEKLY REVIEW
In a furtive ceremony held two days ahead of schedule in
order to pre-empt violence, the United States transferred
"sovereignty" to Iraq. About 140,000 American troops
remained in the country, with no mechanism in place between
the two countries to govern the troops, and 150 Americans
stayed on in Iraqi ministries as advisers. Of the 2,300
construction projects promised by coalition forces, fewer
than 140 were underway at the time of the transfer of power.
Outgoing proconsul L. Paul Bremer warned that Iraq's path to
democracy would be messy, and noted, "It wasn't very pretty
around here either between 1776 and 1787." In response to a
note from Condoleezza Rice announcing Iraq's new status,
President Bush wrote: "Let Freedom Reign!" Three days later,
insurgents fired rockets from a bus and a pickup truck that
hit two central Baghdad hotels, and a mortar attack on a
military base near the city's airport wounded eleven U.S.
soldiers. Court proceedings began at "Camp Victory," the
American base near Baghdad, against Saddam Hussein, who
identified himself as the current president of Iraq, and
eleven members of his administration. "You know that this is
all a theater by Bush, to help him win his election,"
Hussein observed. He was read criminal charges covering
thirty years, including the 1988 gassing of Kurds in
Halabja, which he recalled hearing about "on the radio." The
U.S. said that Hussein had not provided any useful
information while in custody, though he explained that he
had his army invade Kuwait in 1990 to keep them busy.
Observing that "a state of war is not a blank check for the
president," the Supreme Court ruled that both foreign
prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay and so-called enemy
combatants held in the United States can use the American
legal system to challenge their detention. Four American
soldiers were charged with fatally pushing an Iraqi off a
bridge in January for breaking a curfew. Scientists found
that the sneakiest primates have the biggest brains.
President Bush's approval rating fell to its lowest point,
42 percent.
In Afghanistan, Taliban fighters killed fourteen unarmed men
for registering to vote. President Hamid Karzai begged NATO
to send security troops to the country, and to "please
hurry" in advance of September elections, but his request
was rejected. More than 2,100 Florida residents were found
to be wrongly included on a list of ineligible voters. Nine
members of the House of Representatives asked the United
Nations to monitor the November elections, and two
conservative groups were caught illegally promoting Ralph
Nader's presidential candidacy in Oregon. The Bush-Cheney
campaign asked church-going volunteers to provide church
membership directories to state campaign committees, raising
questions about whether the directive violates the
separation between church and state. A Mexican farmer upset
about not getting his party's nomination to run for the
state legislature put on a crown of thorns and nailed
himself to a wooden cross outside the state's electoral
office. While in Turkey for the NATO summit, President Bush
met with religious leaders and thanked them "for being so
faithful to the Almighty God." The pope expressed outrage
over the sacking of Constantinople by Christian crusaders in
1204. The FDA approved the use of blood-sucking leeches for
medicinal purposes. Lonely people were buying robotic
fireflies.
Hillary Clinton promised that if John Kerry wins the
election, Bush's tax cuts will be eliminated: "We're going
to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."
The Supreme Court ruled that a federal law designed to
shield children from Internet porn cannot be enforced,
because it likely violates the First Amendment. American
military officers were worrying that promotional cans of
Coca-Cola including cell phones and global positioning chips
could be used to eavesdrop on classified meetings. The
Cassini spacecraft orbited Saturn and transmitted the first
pictures of the icy rings circling the planet, and the
Hubble Space Telescope discovered a hundred new planets
orbiting stars in the Milky Way. Chiquita was busy
engineering bananas that taste like different fruits. The
French government reported that the number of cows infected
with mad cow disease in the past thirteen years is 300 times
higher than previously suspected, with nearly 50,000
infected animals entering the food chain because the
epidemic had gone undetected. A 132-pound Japanese man ate
53 hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes. "I think he has proven,
once again, that he is one of the finest athletes of any
sport in the world," concluded a spokesman. A dead woman
was suing the late Dr. Robert Atkins for giving her
inadequate cancer-treatment advice. Little boys in Utah were
selling lemonade for $250 a glass to offset a potential $14
million judgment against the Boy Scouts for starting a
wildfire. Experts warned that witches' broom disease and
frosty pod disease could devastate chocolate supplies in
coming years, and female rice farmers in Nepal were plowing
their fields in the nude to please the rain god. Colin
Powell sang and danced to "YMCA" for foreign ministers at a
conference on Asian-Pacific security. A Hindu ascetic was
busy rolling his way 800 miles from India to Pakistan to
promote world peace.
--Margaret Cordi
