HARPER'S WEEKLY REVIEW

[Kire]

WEEKLY REVIEW

It was hot in most of the United States. Many U.S. cities
set records for high temperatures, and huge wildfires
burned in the Southwest. At least twenty people, many of
them homeless, died from the heat in Phoenix,
Arizona. Concern over storms in the Gulf of Mexico led to
an increase in oil prices, and the directors of Enron gave
themselves large raises. Investigations into the expenses
of former Tyco executive Dennis Kozlowski revealed that
Kozlowski had once held an extravagant bachelor party for
his son-in-law. "It wasn't like a three-ring circus," said
the son-in-law's father. "It was a nice party. There was
only one dwarf." Germany declined to finance a bald man's
toupee, even though the state covers the costs of wigs for
women who have lost their hair, and Michael Jackson
announced that he would build another Neverland near
Berlin. A German magazine published a coupon for free sex
with prostitutes, and Heidi Fleiss was planning to open a
brothel in Nevada. "I'm a perfect example of the fact that
prison does work," she said. "I have served my time, now
will do my crime legally." President George W. Bush
nominated John G. Roberts, a federal appeals court judge,
to the Supreme Court. Roberts has criticized U.S. abortion
policy, but is considered very handsome. "American women
will love him," said an editor at More Magazine. "I love
thee," commentator David Brooks wrote of the nomination,
"with the depth and breadth and height my soul can
reach. I love thee freely." Bill and Hillary Clinton paid
off the last of their legal bills, and a Kenyan man was
reported to have offered twenty cows and forty goats to
the Clintons in exchange for their daughter,
Chelsea.

More bombs went off in London's public-transport system,
but only the detonators of the bombs exploded. There was
one injury. Around twenty London police officers chased a
Brazilian electrician named Jean Charles de Menezes onto a
train and shot him dead, thinking he was a
terrorist. Later, a suspicious package in Little Wormwood
Scrubs was detonated safely. Members of the British
government said that the bombings were not related to the
war in Iraq, but only 28 percent of British people agreed;
a Muslim cleric in London said that such attacks would
continue. The U.S. House of Representatives voted to keep
most of the USA Patriot Act, extending provisions that
allow the search of library and medical records by ten
years. "Periodically revisiting the Patriot Act," said
Representative Martin Meehan (D.-Mass.), "is a good
thing." In New York City, police began random bag checks
of subway passengers. The CIA was granted the power to
secretly interrogate Irish citizens in Ireland, and the
Pentagon asked Congress to allow people up to age
forty-two to enlist in the military. Tommy Thompson,
former Secretary of Health and Human Services, announced
that he would have an RFID identity tag inserted into his
body. U.S. Congressman Tom Tancredo (R.-Colo.) said he did
not advocate bombing Mecca, but did not want to rule out
the possibility. Fifty-two prisoners were on hunger strike
at Guantanamo Bay.

A study found that 24,865 civilians have been killed in
Iraq during the last two years; in Baghdad, a suicide
truck bomb killed twenty-five more people. Thirty-six
people were killed in Yemen during riots over fuel
prices. Film director David Lynch announced that he wants
to raise $7 billion to promote transcendental meditation
and thus create world peace. Iran whipped then executed
two teenagers for raping a thirteen-year-old and for being
homosexual, and U.S. rapper Big Tigger denied that he was
gay. Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France for the
seventh time, and a study found that French people think
they look good. The U.S. House of Representatives passed
an amendment to start broadcasting radio and television
programs into Venezuela that will counter the
"anti-Americanism" of Telesur, a new Latin American TV
station. Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez called the plan
"a preposterous imperialist idea." A British court, acting
under the legal principle of "universal jurisdiction,"
convicted a man named Faryadi Zardad on torture charges
for events that took place while Zardad lived in
Afghanistan, where he would often unleash a "human dog"--a
crazed man he kept in a hole--on captives he was holding
for ransom. In London, where he has lived since 1998,
Zardad ran a pizza parlor. A bipolar Indiana woman beat
her two young sons to death with a dumbbell so that the
boys could go to heaven. Florida police were looking for a
naked man who steals into the homes of elderly women late
at night and tickles their feet, China planned to launch
forty grams of pig semen into space, and authorities in
Malaysia arrested fifty-eight people who worship a giant
teapot.

-- Paul Ford

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