Jacques Chirac is in Algeria this week, where he met with President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who was "elected" in 1999 with 73,79% of the votes, after all the other candidates were disqualified or forced to resign. Human Rights Watch says that Algeria leads the world in "enforced disappearances". Der Spiegel reports that Bouteflika praised Chirac for opposing a war against Saddam and proposed that Chirac be rewarded with a Nobel Peace Prize. The caption under the photo: "Chirac visits his colleague Bouteflika in Algeria". "Colleague" is an appropriate choice of words.
Mazal Tov to regular reader and frequent comment poster J. Lichty, who was blessed last week with the birth of his first child. The bris is on Thursday!
Happy belated birthday to old friend and regular reader Tom Allen. I meant to send my wishes a few days ago, but at my advancing age, such things are ever more frequently falling through the cracks...
The anti-American propagandists over at the Baghdad-by-the-Bay Ba'ath Party newspaper are praising Turkish democracy for that country's refusal to join the coalition to liberate Iraq. On the other hand, they leave out the part that Turkey's main interest is in holding the line on Iraqi Kurdish autonomy, in order not to, you know, give the Turkish Kurds Mountain Turks any bright ideas about asking for some of that democracy stuff too.
Back to the USSR: I discovered a whole page of Soviet-era "Radio Yerevan" jokes, already translated into English! (A page of the jokes in Russian is here) Some are dated (that would be a good thing), many others are still very, very funny.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at March 05, 2003 07:32 AMI'm confused. Wouldn't the Turkish interest in screwing over the Kurds be better served by supporting the U.S. now and seeking a greater role in determining the outcome of post-war Iraq later? Anything could change in times of war, of course, but for now I see Turkey's snub as a small setback for us, a big setback for Turkey, and potentially, a huge win for the Kurds.
Posted by: Xrlq on March 5, 2003 12:43 AMI didn't look at all of them, but the English page doesn't seem to have the jokes on the Russian page, like: Q. What type of new wall clock are they making in the USSR? A. From time to time a figure of Stalin pops out and says "kookoo." Or something like that.
Posted by: Lonewacko on March 10, 2003 11:05 PM