Weekly Review

By Christian Lorentzen

Turkey shelled the village of Dashta Takh in Iraqi Kurdistan and declared plans to send its ground troops to attack outposts of the Kurdish separatist PKK in the north of Iraq; criticized for the announcement, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pointed out that the United States invaded Iraq without anyone’s permission. ^{1 2} After the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted for a resolution affirming that a genocide was committed by Ottoman Turks against Armenians during World War I, General Yasar Buyukanit, commander of the Turkish armed forces, said that, should Congress pass the resolution, his country’s military alliance with the United States would never be the same. “We could not,” he said, “explain this to our public. The U.S., in that respect, has shot itself in the foot.”³ The Marine Corps was seeking to withdraw its 25,000 troops in Iraq and redeploy them to Afghanistan,. ⁴ and CIA Director General Michael V. Hayden ordered an internal investigation of the agency’s inspector general, John L. Helgerson, whose own investigations have harshly criticized the CIA’s methods of interrogation and its failure to prevent the attacks of September 11, 2001. ⁵ Hugo Chavez broadcast his weekly television program, “Aló Presidente,” from Che Guevara’s mausoleum in Santa Clara, Cuba, to honor the fortieth anniversary of the guerilla leader’s death. “We are the Axis of Evil,” said Fidel Castro to Chavez via phone. “You will never die,” said Chavez to Castro. “You remain forever on this continent, and with these nations, and this revolution is more alive today than ever, and Fidel, you know it.”⁶ Ramzi Yousef, the jailed mastermind of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, converted to Christianity, ⁷ and guru Sri Chinmoy, author of 1,500 books and organizer of the Self-Transcendence 3,100, the world’s longest footrace, died of a heart attack.⁸

Six million dollars in Nobel Prizes were awarded to: a pair of physicists who discovered giant magnetoresistance; a chemist who created a method for studying surface chemical reactions such as rust; three doctors who used stem cells to deactivate mouse genes; three economists who study malfunctioning markets; novelist Doris Lessing; and documentary film star Al Gore, who, along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was cited for efforts “to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract [climate] change.” ⁹ Former aides to Gore told the press that he was unlikely to join the presidential race because he thinks Hillary Clinton is unstoppable. ¹⁰ “Nothing is inevitable,” said Barack Obama's wife, Michelle, of a Clinton victory. “Sometimes we wear the same suit even if it’s got holes in it. We need a new suit, not just a new tie or new pants.”¹¹ The Republican candidates for president gathered in Dearborn, Michigan, for a debate on the economy. Mitt Romney, who was born in Detroit, bemoaned the “one-state recession“ gripping Michigan; Duncan Hunter repeatedly blamed the loss of American manufacturing jobs on free-trade policies with “communist China”; Ron Paul attributed the large profits of hedge-fund managers to a conspiracy among politicians, banks, Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, and the military-industrial complex to inflate or destroy currencies and swindle the middle class; and John McCain advised Paul to read ”The Wealth of Nations." The candidates generally agreed that taxes are too high. “We’re taxed to the max,” said Sam Brownback. Mike Huckabee touted his Fair Tax proposal to abolish the IRS and to tax consumption as a way to shift the tax burden onto drug dealers, pimps, prostitutes, and illegal immigrants. Paul and Tom Tancredo refused to pledge to support the Republican nominee in the general election.¹² Two thirds of American CEOs, a study found, think that American CEOs are overpaid. ¹³

Investigating the disappearance of a 30-year-old female pharmacist, police in Mexico arrested her boyfriend, Jose Luis Calva, after finding the woman’s torso in his closet, one of her legs in his refrigerator, bones in a cereal box, chunks of an unidentified fried meat in a pan, and the draft manuscript of a novel entitled “Cannibalistic Instincts.”¹⁴ Germans were reading “Interview with a Cannibal,” the story of Armin Meiwes. In the book, Meiwes urges other would-be cannibals to seek psychiatric help, expresses disappointment that the experience was not as “romantic” as he dreamed it would be, and cites the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel as inspiration for his 2001 slaughter and ingestion of Bernd Brandes, who volunteered over the Internet to be eaten. “For him,” said Meiwes “it was a sexual thing. But he also thought like me he would live on in me.”¹⁵ The Colombian game show “Nothing but the Truth” was canceled after a woman won $25,000 for admitting to have hired a hit man to kill her husband, ¹⁶ and a Kremlin spokeswoman said assassins are plotting to kill Vladimir Putin this week during his visit to Tehran.¹⁷ Bo Ward, the proprietor of a barbershop near the Army’s Fort Campbell, committed suicide at a town meeting in Clarksville, Tennessee. Ward had requested that his home be rezoned as a commercial property to increase its value and to offset the losses he suffered when most of his regular patrons, among them General David Petraeus, were deployed to Iraq; the City Council refused. “Y’all have put me under,” said the barber before inserting a pistol into his mouth. “I’m out of here.”¹⁸