By the end of this year…

Charlie 

…inflation in Zimbabwe may hit 100, 000 percent.

Savior socialist Robert Mugabe, mission accomplished!

A sampling of current commodities prices:

• Bar of Dove soap: Z$140,000

• One kg of rice: Z$230,000

• One litre of fuel, where available: Z$300,000

• 200g local cheese: Z$230,000

• Tin of tuna: Z$290,000

• Tin of baked beans: Z$65,000

• 500ml sterilised milk – where available – Z$32,500

• No chicken, beef, pork, sausages, cooking oil, sugar, flour, margarine, fruit cordial, matches.

Down the Slope We Go

Charlie 

Read this powerful New Yorker article on the CIA’s Black Prison system.  It’s long, but well worth it.

The case of Khaled el-Masri, another detainee, has received wide attention. He is the German car salesman whom the C.I.A. captured in 2003 and dispatched to Afghanistan, based on erroneous intelligence; he was released in 2004, and Condoleezza Rice reportedly conceded the mistake to the German chancellor. Masri is considered one of the more credible sources on the black-site program, because Germany has confirmed that he has no connections to terrorism. He has also described inmates bashing their heads against the walls. Much of his account appeared on the front page of the Times. But, during a visit to America last fall, he became tearful as he recalled the plight of a Tanzanian in a neighboring cell. The man seemed “psychologically at the end,” he said. “I could hear him ramming his head against the wall in despair. I tried to calm him down. I asked the doctor, ‘Will you take care of this human being?’ ” But the doctor, whom Masri described as American, refused to help. Masri also said that he was told that guards had “locked the Tanzanian in a suitcase for long periods of time—a foul-smelling suitcase that made him vomit.”

The unabashed arrogance and blatant hypocrisy of American officials representing a so-called free society stuns me.  Though I’m not at all surprised that goons Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Ashcroft, Gonzalez, etc promote such policies, actually reading descriptive accounts of said policies in action is nothing short of horrifying. I have no sympathy for barbaric Al Qaeda, but such action on part of the American government reveals the shocking and grave power of the STATE first hand. Tolerance of this sort of behavior demonstrates how far we have actually slid down the slippery slope. 

Plunder for Science

Sandeep
A few days ago, before I decided to go pound a burrito at BajaFresh, I watched C-SPAN for a few minutes. Rep. Jeff Flake was admirably attacking representatives’ earmarks. But what caught my attention was a Houston politician’s logic in defending an earmark of his. He said something like, “The starting answer is no for all appropriations requests, you gotta earn the money.”