Weekly Review

By Roger D. Hodge

Caught in the Web.

The Labor Department reported that the economy created a mere 96,000 jobs last month, thus failing to keep pace with the expansion of the nation's work force and confirming that George W. Bush has the worst job creation record of any president since Herbert Hoover. The White House reacted to the bad news by declaring that the poor job numbers prove that the president's tax cuts have been working.¹ The Iraq Survey Group issued its final report and concluded that Saddam Hussein dismantled his nuclear weapons program in 1991 and did not attempt to revive it. The inspectors said that there was no evidence that Iraq continued to possess chemical or biological weapons, and they concluded that Hussein refused to admit he had disarmed because he wanted to maintain a deterrent against Iran.² President Bush said that the report proved that Iraq was "a gathering threat."³ L. Paul Bremer, President Bush's former proconsul in Iraq, told an audience of insurance agents that "we never had enough troops on the ground" and that "the single most important change — the one thing that would have improved the situation — would have been having more troops in Iraq at the beginning and throughout." Bremer said that he had argued for more troops but that his requests were denied. The Bush Administration first denied that Bremer asked for more troops and then admitted that, yes, in fact, he did.⁴ Jacques Derrida died of pancreatic cancer.⁵ Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld visited Iraq and told soldiers that the violence there will probably get worse; while he was in the country two car bombs went off in Baghdad, killing 11 people.⁶ Alu Alkhanov was sworn in as president of Chechnya.⁷ Opposition politicians complained that the Afghan presidential election was fraudulent, and an⁸ Iraqi politician was indicted for suggesting that the country open negotiations with Israel.⁹ Bombings in three Egyptian resort towns killed at least 33 people and wounded 149. Many of the victims were vacationing Israelis.¹⁰ A suicide car bombing killed at least 39 people at a rally in central Pakistan, and the¹¹ government banned public meetings except for Friday prayers.¹² Rebels and government soldiers were abducting, torturing, and killing civilians in Nepal.¹³ The genocide in Sudan was continuing.¹⁴ In Haiti, supporters of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide were going after policemen with machetes; some were beheaded.¹⁵ A Washington, D.C., policeman arrested, cuffed, and jailed a woman for eating a candy bar in the subway.¹⁶

The Bush campaign denied rumors that the president was wired with an earpiece to receive help during his first debate with Senator John Kerry.¹⁷ Republicans in Michigan were calling on authorities to prosecute Michael Moore for offering to give clean underwear to college students if they would promise to vote.¹⁸ Republicans in Oklahoma were running television ads showing dark-skinned hands accepting welfare checks, and¹⁹ House majority leader Tom DeLay was again rebuked by the House Ethics Committee for having "created an appearance that donors were being provided special access to you regarding" pending legislation.²⁰ Vice President Dick Cheney and Senator John Edwards had harsh words for each other during their debate;²¹ Cheney claimed that he had never before met Senator Edwards; newspapers then published a photograph of the two men smiling and speaking together at a prayer breakfast.²² Martha Stewart began her five-month prison sentence for telling lies.²³ Swaziland's police commissioner was detained for several hours in the Atlanta airport when he was traveling to the Interpol General Assembly in Mexico.²⁴ King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia abdicated his throne.²⁵ Rodney Dangerfield died.²⁶ Federal tax revenue was lower than it was in 2000,²⁷ Chicago experienced its first murder-free night in five years, and²⁸ Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said that "sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged."²⁹

Britain suspended the license of the factory in Liverpool that was supposed to manufacture almost half the American supply of this year's flu vaccine.³⁰ Public health experts have long warned that it is insane for the United States to depend on two companies for the country's flu vaccine.³¹ The World Health Organization released a study, based on an unscientific "spot-check" sampling, concluding that Indonesian villagers in Buyat Bay, Sulawesi, have not been poisoned by a gold mine, owned by the Newmont Mining Corporation, that dumped about 2,000 tons of mine tailings a day into nearby waters.³² The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations called on hospitals to prevent "anesthesia awareness," which is the term for when a patient can feel the pain of surgery but is unable to move or cry out.³³ Congress agreed to permit the Energy Department to redefine some highly radioactive nuclear waste in South Carolina and Idaho so that it can be left in tanks rather than being pumped out for deep burial.³⁴ Three hundred pounds of weapons-grade plutonium from the United States arrived in France.³⁵ Mexico declined to stop the construction of a Wal-Mart next to the ancient ruins of Teotihuacán, and paleontologists³⁶ in China discovered 130-million-year-old fossils of Dilong paradoxus, an ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex, with impressions of feathers all over its body.³⁷ Scientists sequenced the genome of a Hereford cow.³⁸ Weather experts said that the United States experienced a record number of tornadoes in August and September, and³⁹ Elfriede Jelinek, the Austrian novelist, won the Nobel Prize in Literature.⁴⁰ Scientists were investigating the appearance of hermaphrodite fish in Colorado's South Platte River; the fish were found near two wastewater discharge pipes.⁴¹ Korean and Italian researchers developed a tiny robot with multiple legs designed to crawl through a patient's guts.⁴² Scientists with NIZO Food Research developed an artificial throat that breathes, salivates, and swallows.⁴³ A nineteen-year-old Singapore man set a world record for the number of hamburgers he could stuff in his mouth. "I'm on top of the world right now," he said," because everyone's going to know that I can shove more than three burgers in my mouth."⁴⁴