I know, I know. Aggression is bad. Assaulting someone is bad. Choosing to go with your fist rather than words is a sure sign that you’ve run out of ideas.

But consider that this is the guy who got popped in the face:

Yes. That’s right. As aid to developing countries in the wake of the climate change crisis is being discussed, Berlusconi is doodling women’s underwear. He’s no doubt already mastered sketching rockets and his own privates, so really, what else could a grown man and the leader of a major European power do at such a dull, pointless meeting?

So, you see, the guy is a bit of an ass-hat.  Which doesn’t mean that I’m saying he deserved to be hit. It just means that I find it funny that he was. A couple of busted teeth and a broken schnaz seems a small karmic price to pay…

Also, the fact that this guy can just get popped in the face makes the US Secret Service seem less inept.

For real. They’re calling it “a crusade” (against who? “The psychs”. Which doesn’t sound crazy at all):

None of this is surprising, of course.

They want money. They want “ideal orgs” in every community.

They want more members. They want those members to think they’re doomed without Scientology.

Most disappointing? Logan Eckles. Yes, he who won the heart of sassy teen p-i Veronica Mars and introduced a generation to quotes from Thomas Carlyle (“Adversity is the diamond dust with which heaven polishes its jewels.”) and Eleanor Roosevelt (“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”) is a Xenu freak.

Oh, the heartbreak.

Right-wing Israelis are trying hard to spin the recent British decision to clearly label goods made in illegal Israeli settlements as discriminatory.  The efforts are failing, and this morning, an Israeli diplomat on the BBC said that goods made in other conflict territories weren’t clearly marked (untrue — see: Blood diamonds v. ethical ones), but when pressed to give examples, he stuttered that his diplomatic status prevented him from pointing fingers.

So, what’s the deal with the labeling? Here’s a bit from The Guardian:

Britain has acted to increase pressure on Israel over its West Bank settlements by advising UK supermarkets on how to distinguish between foods from the settlements and Palestinian-manufactured goods.

The government’s move falls short of a legal requirement but is bound to increase the prospects of a consumer boycott of products from those territories. Israeli officials and settler leaders were tonight highly critical of the decision.

Until now, food has been simply labelled “Produce of the West Bank”, but the new, voluntary guidance issued by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), says labels could give more precise information, like “Israeli settlement produce” or “Palestinian produce”.

Nearly 500,000 Jewish settlers live in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, which were conquered in the 1967 war. The British government and the EU have repeatedly said Israel’s settlement project is an “obstacle to peace” in the Middle East.

You can see what went into the debate here.

So, the real reason the argument of discriminatory practice fails is this: If Israel contends that having its settlements in the Palestinian territories is an ethical and just move, then why not feel good about labeling products made there? If the settlements are fine, then why hide goods made or grown there behind a Palestinian label? Besides, even calling those settlements Palestinian is wrong, as Palestinians aren’t allowed to live there.  So, either the settlements are fine, or they’re not.

They can’t have it both ways.

Israelis living and producing goods there don’t have the right to deceive consumers, who are totally within their rights to know what their money is supporting.

In commemoration of Student Day (more of a “Gee-Wish-We-Were-Free-To-Express-Ourselves-Within-The-Context-Of-A- True-Democracy-Upholding-Human-Rights Day, but that’s too long to fit on a button, so…) Iranian government forces are beating the bejeezus out of demonstrators and protestors. Warms the heart, don’t it?

Guess the public is still somewhat cheesed off about that whole stolen election over the summer.

There are reports of tear gas and live ammo being fired used on the crowd, and the official line is that the armed forces are protecting the public from the protestors. No word on who is protecting the protestors from these thugs in uniform.

The WaPo reports

Armed with steel clubs, electric batons, pepper spray and tear gas, the Basij members first surrounded and later assaulted a group of about 700 students who had gathered in front of the university’s technical faculty, where there had also been running battles between the two groups the day before. Regular police units were out in full force in the streets surrounding the university.

“They broke the windows and cut some of us with the pieces of glass,” said a student who only gave his first name, Hamed. (…)

Cell phone service in the area was cut, witnesses said. Students fought back, in some cases injuring members of the Basij, who fall under the command of the Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Note that at the start of this clip, people are shouting “Death to Khamenei” and not just “Death to the Dictator.”

And, unlike previous protests, this one is nationwide, with footage from Tehran, Mashhad, Ahvaz and more on Youtube.

…reports the Dallas Morning News:

Palin brought her rock star-style book tour to North Texas on Friday, captivating hundreds of fans – mostly die-hard conservatives (…)  with her mere signature.

The Alaska hockey mom turned governor turned GOP presidential running mate stepped off a tour bus to a devoted throng that almost tipped police barriers as she walked by.

Really? Rock star? Star power? Well, I guess that tells us something. Plano is reeeeeeally hard up for excitement. So what does this dazzling frenzy culminate in?

From the Dallas Morning News

Huh. It looks like a book signing. With a stack of books and table. If you want to see what a real political rock-star style book signing looks like, check out Bill Clinton’s visit to damn Costco in 2004…

Clinton got a crowd of thousands, with people swooning and all, and he sold three times the number of Palin’s books. And this is 2004, arguably near the height of the Bush presidency. Coz that’s how a true rock star polito be rolls.

…so reports the Washington Post:

Secret Service chief Mark Sullivan told a Congressional committee Thursday morning that the agents who admitted Tareq and Michaele Salahi through a White House checkpoint at last week’s state dinner have been placed on administrative leave and could lose their jobs.

I’m sorry, but, could lose their jobs? Could? Really? Crikey. What does it take to get fired from that gig? Ugh. I don’t want to know. We’re lucky that the Salahis are essentially harmless wannabe fameballs. Shoot. Any club bouncer or Fashion Week list minder would have kept those two clowns out.

Even this guy would do a better job (I know…the bouncer scene out of “Knocked Up” would’ve been better, but NBC won’t share…).

Hot on the heals of President Obama announcing his plans for Afghanistan (major troop commitments for at least 18 months, but a stern warning to the Karzai governmnet there there will be no more blank checks, etc.) a couple of headlines in today’s Evening Standard caught my eye.

The first was:

We’ll hit the Taliban until their eyeballs bleed, says UK general

Well, that’s pretty tough talk.

Now compare the language of General Stanley McChrystal (which only ran in the print edition of the paper):

Now we will seriously degrade the enemy, says McChrystal

Don’t get me wrong. Degrading is pretty badass. Hardcore, maybe in some circles. It just lacks the….ooomph eyeballs and bleeding, no?

While Google Earth continues to document everything  — excluding including  Dick Cheney’s home (but only after it became Joe Biden’s crib) — with their creepy Street View vans, British police are hassling people taking pictures of tourist sites.

The Evening Standard reports that police questioned Jeff Overs, BBC photog taking shots of the sunset over St. Paul’s Cathedral last week as part of their anti-terrorism measures. There were tourists all around him, taking pictures of the same thing. The story goes:

The incident took place on Wednesday – a day before police announced a dramatic fall in the use of anti-terror stop and search powers. This followed an outcry over the number of members of ethnic minorities being searched.

American readers may recall the case of Ian Spiers, the photography student who was questioned an intimidated by agents from the Department of Homeland Security for taking pictures of the Ballard Locks in Seattle in 2004. Even as tourists happily snapped pictures all around him, Spiers, who (unlike Overs) has darker skin, was targeted.

My friend and former colleague Robert Jamieson wrote of the incident:

In May he was taking photos for his Shoreline Community College class at the Ballard locks, where waves of tourists flock to take pictures and where no signs prohibit shutterbugging.

Ian says he suddenly found himself surrounded by more than a half-dozen guys wearing black. He says they glowered, brusquely asked what he was doing and demanded his identification.

He tried to explain he was a photo student who had done nothing wrong and shouldn’t have to show his ID. One of the men, Ian says, erupted: “See this badge! This is a federal badge! I’m with homeland security!” (…)

Before leaving, Ian said the agent made a request: “You ought to let me take your picture.”

The photo student felt devastated. “The real threat to America,” he said when we spoke, “is what I’m experiencing now.”

I’m wondering if they’ve ever caught any terrorist on either side of the pond by walking around and hassling people taking pictures of tourist attractions (read: The very things a city often advertises or promotes as the sort of asset that attracts tourists and photographers).

It seems that minarets are such a major menace to the good people of Switzerland that they had to take a vote on whether to ban them. And…they voted to ban them. The Times reports:

Swiss voters defied their Government and churches today and approved a ban on building minarets — reflecting an alarming hostility to a rising Muslim minority.

Fifty-seven per cent of voters in a referendum supported the direct democracy initiative, which ensured international embarrassment for Switzerland and a backlash in the Muslim world, upon which the country depends for exports.

A big majority of the 27 cantons supported the right-wing inspired move, with opposition strongest in the German-speaking part of the country, according to initial results. In Geneva, home to United Nations agencies, the voters rejected the initiative by nearly 60 per cent. Turnout was 53 per cent, a relatively low figure by the standards of Swiss democracy. Opponents of the measure saw this as a reflection of apathy among many voters who would not have approved of the ban.

Whoa…okay, so the, the anti-minaret vote went through. Is that really a big deal? Don’t  the Swiss have a righ to regulate their architecture? Is this really an anti-Muslim move? I mean, can’t they favor steeples over minarets if they want to? Well, you tell me. Here’s a poster promoting the ban:

Hmmm....is this initiative really about minarets?

Don’t get me wrong. Love the look of the poster, that whole Shepard Fairey meets Communist-era aesthetic. But the fact that the minarets look like missiles and the woman illustrated looks like a sinster, evil spy (it’s all in the eyes) kind of says it all. Alan Fisher reports for Al-Jazeera that there are around 160 mosques in Switzerland and that “Very few have applied to have a minaret.” Fisher writes:

“It’s a symbol against integration,” I’m told by Ulrich Schuler, a Swiss MP and one of the leaders of the anti-minaret campaign.
“It starts with minarets, then the power grows and soon they will want the introduction of Sharia law”.

Well, at least Ulrich is honest about his paranoia. Anyway. To lighten the mood (and, actually, to offer some fine commentary of their own), here’s a classic skit from “The Kids in the Hall.” Enjoy.

…as in, our forces knew where he was in Afghanistan’s Tora Bora mountains (or so says a Senate report release today) but then failed to move in on him. Why? Oh, maybe there was a good “Law & Order” rerun on that night. Or maybe we were totally gonna go, but then got sucked into a game of Halo and, well, there went the night.Right? Wrong. The blame for this epic mistake lands squarely on the shoulders of the higher ups.

The report, entitled, “Tora Bora Revisited: How We Failed to Get Bin Laden and Why It Matters Today” (alternate title: “How We Managed to Screw the Pooch Yet Again in the Middle East and Why They Still Might be Kinda Miffed At Us About It.”) lays it out nicely for us. It’s a pretty sweet read (and by sweet, I mean cringe-inducing), and at 49 pages, a quick one too.

If you’re wondering exactly what the hell happened and who was responsible, here’s an abbreviated blow-by-blow (released just as President Obama is to share his plans for troops in Afghanistan):

By early December 2001, Bin Laden’s world had shrunk to a complex of caves and tunnels carved into a mountainous section of eastern Afghanistan known as Tora Bora.

Note: At this point, US troops were bombing the bejeezus out of the region. So Bin Laden was essentially cornered.

Bin Laden expected to die. His last will and testament, written on December 14, reflected his fatalism. ‘‘Allah commended to us that when death approaches any of us that we make a bequest to parents and next of kin and to Muslims as a whole,’’ he wrote, according to a copy of the will that surfaced later and is regarded as authentic. ‘‘Allah bears witness that the love of jihad and death in the cause of Allah has dominated my life and the verses of the sword permeated every cell in my heart, ‘and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together.’How many times did I wake up to find myself reciting this holy verse!’’ He instructed his wives not to remarry and apologized to his children for devoting himself to jihad.

Got it? The guy knows his jig is up.

But the Al Qaeda leader would live to fight another day. Fewer than 100 American commandos were on the scene with their Afghan allies and calls for reinforcements to launch an assault were rejected.(…) Instead, the U.S. command chose to rely on airstrikes and untrained Afghan militias to attack bin Laden and on Pakistan’s loosely organized Frontier Corps to seal his escape routes.

Also ixnayed were requests for troops to block paths running through the mountain to Pakistan. And that worked out really welll for Bin Laden, who retains his top spot on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list:

On or around December 16, two days after writing his will, bin Laden and an entourage of bodyguards walked unmolested out of Tora Bora and disappeared into Pakistan’s unregulated tribal area. Most analysts say he is still there today.

Still in the wind....

What the…?!?! Who would make such a moronic decision?

The decision not to deploy American forces to go after bin Laden or block his escape was made by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his top commander, Gen. Tommy Franks, the architects of the unconventional Afghan battle plan known as Operation Enduring Freedom.

Oh. Right. Those two. But why?

Rumsfeld said at the time that he was concerned that too many U.S. troops in Afghanistan would create an anti-American backlash and fuel a widespread insurgency. Reversing the recent American military orthodoxy known as the Powell doctrine, the Afghan model emphasized minimizing the U.S. presence by relying on small, highly mobile teams of special operations troops and CIA paramilitary operatives working with the Afghan opposition. Even when his own commanders and senior intelligence officials in Afghanistan and Washington argued for dispatching more U.S. troops, Franks refused to deviate from the plan.

Oh, come on. First off, the report tells us that there were already enough troops there to successfully carry out what needed to be done — get Bin Laden. Furthermore, I’m wondering what happened to this fear of an “anti-American backlash” by the time the decision to attack Iraq (for no legitimate reason whatsoever) rolled around? What obscured their clear vision of things?