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Issandr El Amrani Contact him here
Egypt follows EU line on GM Egypt has unexpectedly rescinded its support for a lawsuit filed by the US against the European Union... 'Baghdad' -- music to Arabs' earsFor Mamdouh, the music that comes out of his creaky radio is one of the few respites from the dense, noisy Cairo traffic... All hell breaks loose in CairoDemonstrators riot and try to close the U.S. Embassy in a country where protest has been mostly banned for 20 years... Mirror of a movementThe word "ebullient" seems barely adequate to describe the atmosphere in the austere Cairo courtroom... Arab League faces uncertain futureOfficials at the Arab League's Cairo HQ - an unassuming building in the city's central square that blends modernist and Islamic architecture - wear long faces these days.
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~ My name is red by Orhan Pamuk 
~ Warda by Sonallah Ibrahim 
~ A history of Iraq by Charles Tripp 
~ HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide by Musciano & Kennedy
~ Apres l'empire by Emmanuel Todd 
~ Scoop by Evelyn Waugh |
Fri, 29 Aug 2003 Now how can anyone claim that this doesn’t stink? Check out the latest post over at Salam Pax… he’s taking it surprisingly easy. Thu, 28 Aug 2003 To add a little more to the Chalabi puzzle, there is an interesting story on Australian journalist Paul Moran over at Back to Iraq 2.0. Most of the story itself is concerned with Moran, officially a journalist working for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, was also working for the Rendon Group, the American PR firm that was more or less handling the Iraqi National Congress dossier for the Pentagon. Naturally there is some outrage that, even if through a proxy, the Pentagon was using a journalist as a spy. It also raises suspicion that the Office of Strategic Interests, set up by Rumsfeld to disseminate false information to foreign journalists, may still be in action through some other name. But my Chalabi fixation picked up this ‘graf: In 1992, the Rendon Group helped organize the Iraqi National Congress. The PR firm, in fact, came up with the name and channeled $12 million in CIA funds to the group between 1992 and 1996. In October 1992, John Rendon chose one of his protŽgŽs, Ahmed Chalabi, to head the group.Go to the story for links. Doesn’t this just sound like yet another sign that Chalabi has absolutely no legitimacy as a representative of the Iraqi people other than being chosen by the CIA, Pentagon and the Rendon Group. It sounds about as bad as Hamid Karzai, who was plucked out of nowhere because he was a Western-leaning businessman with experience in the oil industry. But hey, Karzai at least seems (superficially) like an honest guy. Chalabi just seems like an opportunistic crook. Wed, 27 Aug 2003 I want to recommend a site that I came across while researching Moroccan politics for my upcoming trip over there. Aloufok.net calls itself “the electronic publication of the Arab democratic movement” and has links to a lot of different materials on different countries. Although it focuses on (and is dedicated to) the intifada, it also has sections on Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq and Morocco. I thought this speech by Nabil Helaly of the Egyptian Committee for the Defense of Democracy was particularly interesting.
Here’s a few choice morsels: Democracy may be coming to the region, but you can bet it’s not going to be pro-American (or pro-Israeli) democracy. If you want to read something that will have every conspiracy theorist and his neighbor talking over the next few months, take a look at this Haaretz story about plans to revive a pipeline between Mosul and Haifa that hasn’t been used since 1948.
Naturally, this isn’t something that the Israelis have just thought of now. Plans for the pipeline were first brought up by Minister Paritzky in March, just before the war, in talks with US officials and… Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress. Josh Marshall of TPM had noted this last April, and has links to three stories about the discussions and a nice juicy quote of Chalabi’s best buddy in Washington, Richard Perle, saying that Chalabi “and his people have confirmed that they want a real peace process, and that they would recognize the state of Israel. There is no doubt about that if they come to power.” Now remind me again why Chalabi is a member of the provisional congress that currently exists in Iraq? Is it because Iraqis love him? Not really. Because he has a large natural constituency there, like the Shia clerics or traditional Kurdish leaders? Nope. Because he has influence over former regime and military figures, liked the exiled Baathist generals? Not that either. Surely it’s not just that he wooed the right people in Washington, got money to hire thugs and was driven by the US Army to Baghdad where he decided to grab a nice piece of public property as his headquarters? Say it ain’t so…Mon, 25 Aug 2003 Prostitution, the Wafd party, and C. Wright Mills Only two of these topics are related — guess which?
More on Iraq and the occupation There are a few links I wanted to mention in the earlier post but lost after a computer crash. First, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has published a thorough report on the situation in Iraq. You can get it here in either text or PDF format if you scroll down at the bottom of the page. Perhaps even more interesting will be the latest International Crisis Group report on Iraq — ICG usually gets things spot on. In light of the growing debate on the need for more soldiers on the ground — something that many people are saying (and I would agree) is needed whether you agreed with the invasion in the first place or not — there seems to be an incredible level of denial at the Pentagon. Faced with requests by congressmen for more support for the troops in Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld has proposed a radical reform of the entire military. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, seeking to increase the nation’s combat power without hiring more troops, is poised to order a sweeping review of Pentagon policies, officials say. It will include everything from wartime mobilization and peacekeeping commitments, to reservist training and incentives for extended duty. So basically, there’s a pressing issue at hand and he’s proposing that instead of solving that with what’s available, the Pentagon wonks put on their policy caps and radically change the way they operate. How exactly is this going to help the immediate situation in Iraq? Also note a little further down: Other proposals are based in pragmatism. Mr. Rumsfeld told Congress he wanted to transfer to civilians or contract workers an estimated 300,000 administrative jobs now performed by people in uniform. In other words, he wants to apply corporate restructuring to the US military. It’s exactly the kind of thinking that is being applied in Medicare, Social Security, schools and hospitals. I still fail to understand why public services need to be run like corporations. The thinking is fundamentally flawed — corporations are run for profit, whereas public services are run for a greater public welfare that is much harder to quantify. This may be in part free market fundamentalism, which sees the corporate way as the only way and everything else as thinly disguised communism, but you also have to wonder: who’s gonna get the contracts to replace the administrative staff? Sounds like more taxpayer subsidies for corporate America to me. This just in — the powers that be mount the oh-no-we-don’t-need-more troops PR offensive just as Congress gets more impatient. Going from evasive Newspeak to plain talk, read this great column by the always interesting Joe Galloway, who says that the US should either “do the job or get out.” I’m sure I probably wouldn’t see eye to eye with this guy on many things (like his view of Egypt and Syria as “volcanos that could erupt at any moment”), but I certainly appreciate his candor: While you’re there, you may want to also read his earlier column that addresses Rumsfeld’s obsession with downsizing. This guy knows what he’s talking about. Sun, 24 Aug 2003 Iraq, the occupation and the future of the UN Since last week’s bombing of the UN building in Baghdad, there’s been a lot written about whether the UN could be relied on, whether it should have a more important role in the reconstruction of Iraq, and the general state of the institution. Considering that the Bush administration had decided just a few days before the bombing to sideline the UN, the bombing added urgency to an important question. From what we’ve seen in the past few weeks, the “resistance” or “terrorist” movement against the occupation forces is rising. The bombing indicates that either those behind the violence think the UN is fully complicit with the US-UK invasion of Iraq, or that it is a soft but symbolic target that is easier to hit than, say, the coalition’s HQ. It also raises the question of whether the UN should integrate more closely with the efforts of the CPA, or on the contrary leave as much as possible in the hands of the US, the UK and the coalition of the willing to send troops without the sanction of a UN resolution. From the reporting that is coming out of Iraq, we can see if not outright hostility towards US troops, at least a degree of frustration and humiliation in having to deal with an occupying army. Many think that this is justification enough to give the UN a greater role, as Juan Cole and Kofi Annan. Here’s Cole: The bombing of UN headquarters may reveal that the guerrillas fear most of all the moral authority and legitimacy of the international body. Without this, the US and Britain look suspiciously like neoimperialists to angry young Iraqis, whom the radicals hope to enlist in their fight. Ironically, the wisest American response may be to involve the UN much more extensively in Iraqi security and reconstruction. And Annan, quoted in the NYT:
Bringing in the UN may not only be a question of revitalizing an institution that has been enfeebled by the Bush administration and its own past, or even giving a more acceptable face to the occupation for the Iraqis. It may also be a question of necessity to bring the level of commitment to Iraq that the task at hands needs. The situation in Iraq is not under control. Terrorists from abroad are coming in. Some say that, considering the war was based on the wrong reasons, troops should be getting out now before the death toll mounts. But that’s irresponsible — we started this mess, and now we have to clean it up. And the UN, which would hopefully bring in foreign troops experienced in peacekeeping operations (French, German, Canadian, Norwegian etc…), is probably the best way to do that. Should it become involved, it will not only be an opportunity to ease the situation in Iraq, but also to develop a more realistic role for its mission in the future (speaking of which…)Sat, 23 Aug 2003 If you want to know what’s wrong with contemporary American politics, read this. The New York Observer ran this thought-provoking piece about a group of four 9/11 widows who conducted their own investigation into the intelligence failure to prevent the attacks. They relentless asked (and asked and asked) tough questions until someone listened to them, which certainly isn’t done by the meek Washington press these days. Although probably goes over the top praising them, they were apparently responsible in part for the fact that there was a 9/11 commission at all. And they’re still not satisfied with the answers. It’s well worth reading, if only to remind ourselves that you don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to see that there is something very wrong about the way the Bush administration and certain government agencies have handled 9/11. Kristen and the three other housewives who also lost their husbands in the attack on the World Trade Center started out knowing virtually nothing about how their government worked. For the last 20 months they have clipped and Googled, rallied and lobbied, charmed and intimidated top officials all the way to the White House. In the process, they have made themselves arguably the most effective force in dancing around the obstacle course by which the administration continues to block a transparent investigation of what went wrong with the countryÕs defenses on Sept. 11 and what we should be doing about it. They have no political clout, no money, no powerful husbandsÑno husbands at all since Sept. 11Ñand they are up against a White House, an Attorney General, a Defense Secretary, a National Security Advisor and an F.B.I. director who have worked out an ingenious bait-and-switch game to thwart their efforts and those of any investigative body. Speaking of Moms, it’s not often mentioned that they are a potentially extremely powerful political group and I don’t just mean “soccer moms.”) If you look at the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon or the Soviet withdrawal from the Soviet Union, they took place largely because governments could not face the pressure from grassroots Mom movements protesting that their sons were coming home in bodybags from places they had no business being. In the case of Afghanistan, I’ve even heard some people make the argument that the Soldiers’ Mothers movement was one of the first truly independent grassroots movement under the Communists. (See also here for similar movements against the Chechnya war.) And the apparratchiks, with all their might, could do nothing about it. I mean, what were they gonna do? Torture their mothers? Afterthought: I can’t find the links, but there has been some talk of the mothers of American soldiers serving in Iraq forming a group. It’s probably still early for that, but with the way things are going and the way soldiers are being treated…Arab public opinion and America Foreign Affairs, not exactly my favorite magazine lately, is running in its current issue this thoughtful call for a rethink of American public diplomacy towards the Arab world and a better understanding of the dynamics of public opinion there.
I’ve seen public opinion in Egypt swing back and forth about the US in the past few years, even on issues of as little real import as the occasional (and empty) White House declarations against Israeli policy. Perhaps the most telling example of all, though, was George Bush Sr.’s threat to cut Israel’s loan guarantees in 1991 to force it to engage seriously in the peace process. At the time, Poppy Bush was a virtual hero in the Arab world for saying that (and that was just after the Gulf War), and is remembered to this day for it. All of which is to say that, as some will likely argue, trying to woo Arab public opinion is not pointless. There is no deep-seated hatred of America in this region — just a largely justified suspicion of American motives, especially in the context of the White House’s current disastrous public diplomacy and continuing lack of transparency in its relations with Arab dictators. There are some things the US believes Arabs may not like. But saying it straight and being honest about it, and spending public diplomacy dollars on more long-term projects that can build trust and dialogue, would at least establish mutual respect. At the moment, like the diplomats of many countries, US Public Diplomacy officers sometimes seem to be more interested in organizing splashy one-time events that will catch their superiors’ attention than doing anything really constructive. If you look at the French, for instance, their focus on permanent cultural centers that often become little hubs of artistic activity seem much more likely to generate goodwill between peoples (which I guess is the point of public diplomacy.)Wed, 20 Aug 2003 Yesterday’s car bombing of the UN building in Baghdad (see latest here) was pretty shocking, if only because many of my journalist and photographer friends from Cairo are in Baghdad at the moment. Thankfully, I’ve heard from them and none of them were armed. Still, it’s worrying that the attack timed with a press conference — as if they were trying to get the maximum number of non-Iraqis as possible. It is making me think (but not rethink) about my own plans to move there. There is a lot of interesting stuff to read about — things I was reading and thinking about before the attack, such as why there have been so many attacks in the past few weeks against civilian services like power stations, sewage treatment plants, water systems and so on. Are these nihilists trying to deprive Iraqis of much needed basic sanitation and services in hope that they’ll get angry at the occupation forces? The mind boggles. Salam Pax has his usual thoughtful comments to make, although he sounds very down indeed: I am plunging into a fucking depression, do we have a future? is this country going to be hijacked by shit extremists who want to prove a point? …we have plunged into darkness. There have been some interesting theories floating out there suggesting that this is Al Qaeda’s work. Possibly. I find the news, reported by the Financial Times, that up to 3000 men have gone missing in Saudi Arabia and may have crossed into Iraq more worrying. They don’t need to be Al Qaeda, just some Wahhabi fanatics who share their ideology. Remember the 9/11 report where 28 pages implicating the Saudis were not released? The Saudis and their backward bedouin religious extremism have been the poison the in the blood of the Arab world for nearly half a century now. When will it end? The journalist Peter Bergen, one of the rare Westerners to interview Osama bin Laden, thinks that while Al Qaeda and Iraq had nothing to do with each other, the war has caused Al Qaeda to infiltrate Iraq and use an issue with immense appeal across the Arab world to boost its standing: Bin Laden has long modeled al Qaeda’s tactics on that of Hezbollah in Lebanon during the early ’80s. Hezbollah’s 1983 suicide bombing of a US Marine barracks in Beirut that killed two hundred and forty US soldiers, led to the withdrawal of American forces from Lebanon. And bin Laden has reveled in the fact that the deaths of eighteen US servicemen in Somalia in 1993 also precipitated a quick withdrawal of American troops from that country. It is this model that al Qaeda hopes to follow in Iraq, fighting a war of attrition against US soldiers that will eventually lead to a humiliating withdrawal of American forces. It is only a matter of time before al Qaeda is able to pull off a significant terrorist attack that kills a large number of American soldiers. At that point perhaps the American public will ask: “Didn’t we invade Iraq to prevent exactly what is happening now?”Maybe it’s Al Qaeda. Maybe it’s the Saudis and other fanatics from outside and inside Iraq. But it sure doesn’t sound like the people who are nostalgic for Saddam Hussein that Bush & co. keep blaming for these attacks. Tue, 19 Aug 2003 The Pentagon; Fascism; Arnold; Iraq; Conason; Belly dancing
“This is a very corrupt business — it’s about sabotage, lies, power, money, pussy…”Who knew? Despite the many obituaries published in the last week for Idi Amin, it is quite amazing that only one paper, the Independent, noted that it was Israel that had helped put Amin — who killed over 300,000 people during his reign — in power.
According to the article, it was only after they found out that the Israelis were helping Amin that they decided to fly to Tel Aviv to tell the Israelis that they too would back him — “as if getting permission.” In the meantime, the New York Times chose to focus instead on the country that hosted Amin after his demise, Saudi Arabia. I know it’s fashionable these days to put down the Saudis, and to a large extent they certainly deserve it. But it’s a bit hypocritical to mention Saudi Arabia but not Israel, which allowed Amin to start his reign of terror in the first place. All the more so when the US has played host to a countless number of exiles with shameful pasts, such as the Iraqi generals who switched sides at the beginning of the recent war in exchange for asylum. “The underdog who dares to fight back is always better off” Joe Conason of Salon (whose column I read religiously) apparently has a new book out and judging from the first excerpt they published today, I’ll be buying it: I would have liked to quote a lot more, but you can read the whole thing for yourself. Which means you’ll probably have to watch an ad, or subscribe. I encourage the latter, not only because I did and because they occasionally give me some of that money, but also because it is absolutely worth it. Mon, 18 Aug 2003 According to the New York Daily News, the reason there hasn’t been a new massive terrorist attack on US soil is not that there has been more effective counter-terrorist measures, or that the threat posed by Al Qaeda for another attack was exaggerated, or even that terrorists are too scared to act these days. Oh no. It’s that life in America is just too damn comfortable: “A lot of these guys lose the jihadi, desert spirit,” one official told the magazine. “They get families, they get jobs, and they lose the fire in the belly. Welcome to America.”Never underestimate the tempering power of the bourgeoisie. Seen on a London hip boutique… 
Sun, 17 Aug 2003 Michael Walzer, who is probably the greatest living philosopher of war, is interviewed in this fascinating piece. It’s interesting reading just to see how he saw the recent war in light of his book Just and Unjust Wars, but also remains critical of the reluctance of Europeans, and France and Germany in particular, to embrace their responsibilities and adequately fund their militaries. Over the past decade, whenever these countries have complained about US actions, they have been unable to provide credible alternatives (just see the former Yugoslavia.) It’s about time they bite the bullet and, if they want to be equal to the US, be able to act on their own. Also interesting in this piece is how Walzer (who describes himself as having a “long involvement in Zionist politics in the Jewish diaspora and in Israeli politics too”) sees the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
Although it’s nice to see a Zionist imply that Palestinian resistance fighters targeting occupation forces or paramilitary settlers are fighting a just war, the way he argues against attacking settlers seems dishonest. Why are attacks on (non-paramilitary) settlers “terrorist acts, murder exactly” whereas Israel dropping a bomb on Gaza is a mere “criminal act”? I also wonder what Walzer would think about this incredible and relatively little-reported news that the US has “abandoned” the idea of giving the UN a bigger role in the occupation of Iraq. Instead, the officials said, the United States would widen its effort to enlist other countries to assist the occupation forces in Iraq, which are dominated by the 139,000 United States troops there.What now, a coalition of the willing for the occupation as well as the war? It’s not as if US soldiers didn’t need the help… MSNBC’s The Scoop reports that President Bush turned to fundamentalist Christian Jack Van Impe for doomsday advice:
When they asked the administration about it, this is what they got:
This Van Impe guy is an interesting character. A tele- and radio-evangelist, he shares the belief increasingly common among fundamentalist Christians in America that the world is about to end, and that only the pious will be saved, or “raptured,” by God before Judgement Day. What bring said apocalypse, of course, is an evil alliance of the European Union and corporations. See what he told a reader of his “Internet Prophecy Portal Website” who asked him about the mark of the beast:
For more fundie craziness, look no further than the Presidential Prayer Team, an association devoted to providing daily prayers to the head honcho at the White House (That’s Dubya, not Dick Cheney in case you weren’t sure). The PPT claims to be
This fiercely independent, nonpartisan organization offered the following prayer on 15 August: Well, as long as they’re not trying to push a particular point of view… It’s not that we didn’t know it already, but it’s sure is nice to see the authoritative press zeroing in, calling a spade a spade and saying out loud that the administration lied and invented evidence for the war in Iraq — see the Washington Post, Associated Press and Newsweek. The AP story has great list of all the weapons allegedly in Iraq but that haven’t been found, but the choicest morsel comes in this now oft-quoted Post paragraph: Incidentally, Tom Tomorrow points out that there was an editorial attacking Al Gore’s great speech for having “validated just about every conspiratorial theory of the antiwar left” in the very same issue (9 August) of the Post. Aside from the fact that it contradicts the article they ran, it’s worth reading the editorial to see how they are trying to discredit Gore as a conspiracy theorist just because he pointed out what’s obvious to all. It shows just how courageous Gore was to make that speech. OpenDemocracy ran this nice transcript of a discussion panel of exiled Iraqi poets at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. It includes a rather amusing poem about Saddam Hussein called The Runaway President. Iraqi poetry is a topic I’ve always found interesting since I first read Abdel Wahab Al Bayati, the father of modern Iraqi poetry, a few years ago while doing research on Iraq for my Master’s and more recently while writing an article during the war. 
I first read about Al Bayati by chance when I picked up a French compilation of his work called Autobiographie du voleur de feu (Autobiography of the fire thief) published by Actes Sud and UNESCO in 1987. (A similar compilation in English is Love, death and exile.)
Fire is a recurrent theme in his work — perhaps link to the traditional worship of fire that was common in the ancient religions of Iraq. One particularly nice poem that refers to it is Secret of Fire: On the last day Georgetown’s Arab Information Project has some recitals of Bayati’s poetry online, which you can download here. The OpenDemocracy piece also has a series of good links, not least to this upbeat BBC article about the revival of poetry post-Saddam. I hope these artists finally have a chance to restore some dignity to their country’s cultural landscape. OpenDemocracy, by the way, is running more and more interesting pieces — such as this story on the impact of the war on Arab media. Well worth bookmarking.Just when you thought he’d disappeared into irrelevance, Al Gore springs back out of nowhere with what is probably the best speech on the Bush administration of any senior Democrat since 2000. Millions of Americans now share a feeling that something pretty basic has gone wrong in our country and that some important American values are being placed at risk. And they want to set it right. Yup. The speech is really worth reading and rereading, and makes you think about why Gore’s fellow New Dems are crying wolf about those presidential candidates, such as Howard Dean and John Kerry, that are saying the same things in their campaign. That should be the central message of the party, and they are harming their own chance in the next presidential elections if they don’t dare to take a stance. If Gore, a centrist moderate and consummate Beltway insider if there ever was one, can say it, then so should they. As the NYT Op-editorialist Bob Herbert puts it: That says a lot about us and the direction we’re headed in as a nation. You can agree with Mr. Gore’s politics or not, but some of the points he’s raising, especially with regard to President Bush’s credibility on such crucial issues as war and terror and the troubled economy, deserve much closer attention.Incidentally, Bob Herbert is really worth reading religiously (and what a great picture!) He may not have the panache of Maureen Dowd (but then again he doesn’t have her ego) or Paul Krugman’s relentlessly aggressive stance, but makes some pretty powerful points. In an earlier column about a meeting of top Bushie economic policymakers, he repeats what Krugman has been saying for months: It’s too bad George Akerlof wasn’t at the meeting. Mr. Akerlof, a 2001 Nobel laureate in economics, bluntly declared on Tuesday that “the Bush fiscal policy is the worst policy in the last 200 years.” Speaking at a press conference arranged by the Economic Policy Institute, Mr. Akerlof, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said, “Within 10 years, we’re going to pay a serious price for such irresponsibility.”It may not be new, but it’s nice to hear someone else say it. Sat, 16 Aug 2003 It’s long been known that the Bush administration, for all its patriotic chest-beating, doesn’t exactly have the best track record in defending the interests of uniformed men and women. You just need to look at the cutbacks in veterans’ benefits over the past few years to see that — nevermind Dubya’s own spotty National Guard career or his use of soldiers as props for photo-ops. However, things for soldiers seem to be going from bad to worse. The Pentagon now wants to cut back the extra $225 a month in “imminent danger pay” and “family separation allowance” that soldiers serving in Iraq are getting in order to save $3 million in this year’s budget.
Damn right. And if you look around the web, it’s clear that soldiers serving in Iraq are among the most disgruntled with US military policy. Not only do many feel that they have been sent to Iraq under the false impression that they would be only be staying shortly in the country, but they clearly feel that there isn’t enough of them and that they aren’t being given the website uncovering the real situation in Iraq. It’s worth reading through it, as well as through the equally valuable Soldiers for the truth website, which Hackworth also frequently contributes to. Or go straight to the source and scan the blogs maintained by soldiers serving in Iraq with regular access to computers (presumably comms guys), such as the excellent …turningtables…, which today is running this incredible story about soldiers finding out that they can exchange now nearly worthless Iraqi dinars at the old exchange rates back in the States. It sounds like an urban myth, but it could be true. Also worth reading is Soldier’s Paradise, who has this to say about the increasingly tense relations between US soldiers and Iraqis:
Speaking of tense relations, it was sad to hear about what happened to Salam Pax’s friend G.:
You get the feeling that, as many are beginning to suggest, if Rumsfeld and the neocons had not been minimalists in the numbers of troops they thought they would need in Iraq — or indeed how “welcome” these troops would be made to feel once there — this kind of stuff would not happen as much. It’s sad, considering that the US army usually takes very good care of its own.
Of all the ink spilled on California’s insane elections, this was my favorite story. Not only does it put things into perspective, but it shows that if “the world’s largest democracy” can handle actors-turned-politicians, then California also can. It’ll survive. And if Californians really want to show that they are serious, then the answer is not to not vote for action movie stars, have-been child actors, pornographers, porn stars or socialite columnists, but do the right thing in the first place by keeping Gray David in his job until the next real election. Maybe there’ll be some real candidates. |
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