weekly review from harpers

WEEKLY REVIEW

A joint congressional committee released an 850-page report concluding
that the September 11 attacks could have been prevented; a 28-page
section
detailing the Saudi Arabian government's links to the terrorists was
redacted. The report, which also found no evidence of links between Iraq

and Al Qaeda, had been slated for release in December 2002 but was
delayed
due to administrative wrangling over which sections should be
classified.
After killing Saddam Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay, U.S. forces
circulated grisly photos of the corpses in hopes that the images would
help to dispel conspiracy theories, popular among Iraqis, that the
United
States is still in league with Saddam Hussein. A spokeswoman for the
division that conducted the raid declared, "The 101st kicks ass." Four
American soldiers were formally charged with abusing their Iraqi
prisoners, and the International Red Cross demanded information on the
status of three dozen Iraqi scientists detained in unknown locations.
Deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz warned Iraq's neighbors not to
meddle with the American occupying forces, proclaiming, "I think all
foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq." The

former head of the U.S. army's Depleted Uranium Project announced that
the
damage from munitions used in both Gulf Wars will eclipse the Agent
Orange
fallout of the Vietnam War. A woman from Delaware shipped 200
air-conditioning units to American soldiers in Iraq. French police
evacuated an airport in Toulouse and blew up a bag of puff pastry. The
Eiffel Tower caught fire.

The Bush Administration was lobbying to amend a provision of the Kyoto
Protocol that would phase out methyl bromide, the single most
ozone-destructive chemical still used in industrialized nations.
Scientists estimate that the ban would prevent 2 million cases of cancer

in the United States and Europe alone; the administration's proposed
amendment would increase the chemical's use threefold. A Belgian
botanist
announced that the banana as we know it will be extinct within a decade.

British officials instituted a National Foreplay Day after a study found

that many Britons were avoiding it. Austrian surgeons conducted the
first
successful transplant of a human tongue. A mayor in southern Spain
banned
men from going out on Thursday nights; the mayor, who will deploy
brigades
of women to patrol the streets and issue fines to errant males,
proclaimed
that "in future, Thursday will be a day for women." The Malaysian
government decreed that a man may divorce his wife via text message;
under
Islamic Sharia law men are allowed to divorce their wives by uttering
the
word "talaq" ("I divorce you") three times. Northern Europeans were
protesting Greek plans to license more brothels in time for the 2004
Olympics. The Canadian government released a 59-page user's manual for
marijuana. Scientists in Rome concluded that pizza prevents cancer.
Americans were spritzing their offspring with "ChildCalm," a spray that
purports to mollify unruly children. The FDA approved a hormone shot for

short kids.

Liberians dumped mangled corpses at the U.S. embassy in Monrovia to
protest the lack of American involvement in their civil war. Mortuary
workers in Zimbabwe were renting cadavers to motorists who wished to
take
advantage of the priority given to hearses in gas-station lines.
Officials
in England unveiled a new system of "restorative justice," in which
criminals may avoid court by apologizing to their victims. Japanese
police
replaced their sirens with the recorded sound of church bells, in hopes
of
soothing agitated criminals. The NAACP called for an inquiry into the
death of a black man who was found hanging from a tree with his hands
tied
behind his back; local police had concluded that the man, who had been
dating the daughter of a white police officer, had committed suicide.
Two
FBI agents interrogated a bookstore employee who was observed reading an

article entitled "Weapons of Mass Stupidity." A folksinger was banned
from
performing at a Border's bookstore in Fredericksburg, Virginia, after
she
opined between songs that President Bush has "chicken legs" and would be

well advised to lift weights. The Los Angeles Times refused to allow a
Secret Service agent to interrogate a cartoonist who had depicted a
figure
labeled "politics" pointing a gun at President Bush against a background

labeled "Iraq." A federal judge in Colorado sentenced three nuns to two
and a half years in prison for damaging a nuclear-missile silo during an

antiwar protest. Defense contractor Lockheed Martin filed suit against
antiwar demonstrators for $41,000 in security costs the company incurred

preparing for a protest. A poll found that 74 percent of Israeli
settlers
in the West Bank and Gaza Strip would leave if paid to do so. Officials
from Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico changed the name of Highway 666 to
Highway 491. A man in Hong Kong set fire to his life savings to protest
his bank's low interest rates. German scientists announced that vacation

lowers your IQ.

--Elizabeth Giddens

http://www.harpers.org/weekly-review

Copyright 2003 Harper's Magazine Foundation
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North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
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