Weekly Review

By Roger D. Hodge

Ten bombs blew up four commuter trains in Madrid during the morning rush hour on March 11, killing 200 people and wounding about 1,500. The Spanish government initially blamed Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, the Basque separatist group, but a¹ videotape soon emerged in which Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack . "This is an answer to your cooperation with the Bush criminals and their allies," the tape said. Three days later, Spanish voters, who overwhelmingly opposed their government's support of the Iraq war, turned out the ruling Popular Party in favor of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, which pledged to bring Spanish troops home from Iraq.² Seven American soldiers were killed in Iraq over the weekend; officials said that the Iraqi resistance has begun using more sophisticated tactics.³ Pakistan tested a new long-range missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead.⁴ The United States released five British citizens from the camps in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Britain held the men for less than a day before releasing them.⁵ One of the men charged that he was tortured physically and psychologically. "After a while, we stopped asking for human rights," he said. "We wanted animal rights."⁶ Two suicide bombers killed eight people in Ashdod, Israel.⁷ CIA director George Tenet revealed that he has privately corrected Dick Cheney several times after the vice president publicly "misconstrued" intelligence.⁸ The Pentagon was still paying $340,000 a month to the Iraqi National Congress, the exile group that provided much of the discredited intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq, and⁹ President George W. Bush said that he would try to find time to answer all the questions of the federal commission investigating the September 11 attacks.¹⁰ Criminal investigations of Halliburton for its war profiteering in Iraq were ongoing; the company has acknowledged that mistakes were made.¹¹ China amended its constitution to say that "the state respects and preserves human rights." Another amendment declared that "private property obtained legally shall not be violated."¹² Saudi Arabia established its first nongovernmental human-rights group, and a¹³ Georgia woman was arrested for trying to pass a fake $1 million bill at a Wal-Mart.¹⁴

Congressional Republicans were beginning to show signs of resistance to President Bush's spendthrift policies. "We have been out of control for the last three years," said Senator Trent Lott. "We kind of got a little carried away."¹⁵ It was revealed that the Bush Administration threatened to fire the government's chief Medicare actuary if he told Congress that the Medicare bill, which was passed in November by 5 votes, would cost more than $500 billion over 10 years, rather than the $395 billion the administration was claiming publicly.¹⁶ Congress was investigating videos produced by the White House for local television news programs in which paid actors impersonate reporters and give flattering accounts of the new Medicare law.¹⁷ White House officials denied that the president was responsible for the record budget deficit.¹⁸ It was estimated that unfunded federal mandates will cost states more than $29 billion this year.¹⁹ UCLA apologized for selling off body parts of people who donated their bodies to science.²⁰ It was reported that the Army has been buying surplus cadavers and blowing them up in land-mine experiments.²¹ A new study of former child soldiers in Uganda found that 6 percent had seen a family member killed, 2 percent had killed a family member, and 27 percent had been obliged to drink their own urine.²² Scientists were trying to develop artificial blood.²³

The Union of Concerned Scientists reported that more than two thirds of conventional crops have been polluted with genetically modified material. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Biotechnology Industry Association said the report was unsurprising, and the²⁴ Great Britain approved the commercial cultivation of genetically modified maize.²⁵ Commission for Environmental Cooperation warned Mexico that its genetically precious native corn varieties are threatened by pollution from genetically modified corn.²⁶ The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that obesity was killing almost as many people as tobacco; poor diet and sloth were responsible for 400,000 deaths in 2000, or 16.6 percent of everyone who died; tobacco killed 435,000 people, or 18.1 percent.²⁷ The British Nutrition Foundation reported that McDonald's new Caesar salad with Chicken Premiere contains 18.4 grams of fat, whereas a cheeseburger contains only 11.5 grams.²⁸ The House of Representatives passed the so-called cheeseburger bill, which if made law would grant immunity from lawsuits to restaurants, especially fast-food chains, that serve unhealthy food.²⁹ Luciano Pavarotti gave his last staged performance.³⁰ A study found that teenagers who vow to remain virgins were almost as likely to catch a venereal disease as normal teens.³¹ In Penticton, British Columbia, a man cut off his penis and testicles and ran through the street naked, trailing blood, screaming, "Repent, repent, fornicators."³² Swiss Re, the world's second largest reinsurance company, warned that the costs of climate change could be $150 billion a year before long, with insurers facing $30-40 billion in annual claims. "There is a danger," the company said in a report, "that human intervention will accelerate and intensify natural climate changes to such a point that it will become impossible to adapt our socio-economic system in time."³³ It was reported that the permafrost is disappearing from the bogs of subarctic Sweden because of climate changes, resulting in large emissions of methane, which as a greenhouse gas is 25 times worse than carbon dioxide.³⁴ Hundreds of elk in Wyoming were dying of a strange disease.³⁵ The stock market was down,³⁶ Switzerland moved to legalize absinthe, and³⁷ President Vladimir Putin of Russia was reelected.³⁸ British children found a three-headed frog with six legs.³⁹