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2006

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2005 2006 2007

Contents

[edit] Events

[edit] Timeline

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[edit] January

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[edit] January

[edit] January 1

  • Eight car bombs explode in Baghdad, killing as many as 40. Three car bombs explode in Kirkuk, wounding 12.
  • Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that European countries created Israel after the Second World War to continue the expulsion of the Jews from Europe.
  • Iran threatened a "crushing reponse" if the United States and/or Israel attacked its nuclear and military facilities.
  • Partially (51%) state owned Russian energy firm GAZPROM cuts off pipeline shipments of natural gas to Ukraine in price dispute. Later restored.
  • A cynical President G.W. Bush uses wounded American soldiers at Brooke Army Medical Center as props to defend unconstitutional warrant-less domestic NSA electronic surveillance program.

[edit] January 3

  • U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton asserts that the permanent UN Security Council members, the U.S., Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom, should also be on the new Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council.

[edit] January 4

  • Poland's new conservative government purges 10 Polish ambassadors, including its ambassador to Britain, Germsany and Israel, with pre-1989 links to "communist-era special services or to the communist party."
  • Pres. George W. Bush claims that the U.S. strategy in Iraq is succeeding. Poor timing given events on the ground the next day.

[edit] January 5

  • Suicide bombing in Tirin Kot, Afghanistan kills 10 Afghanis.
  • 11 U.S. soldiers and more than 120 Iraqi police recuits and civilians are killed in the war. The number of U.S. military fatalities reaches 2,192.
  • On his 700 Club television program Rev. Pat Robertson quotes the Prophet Joel and comments that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is on the point of death because, "He was dividing God's land, and I would say woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the European Union, the United Nations, or the United States of America. God says: 'This land belongs to me. You'd better leave it alone.'" Secularists suspect that Sharon's stroke might have something to do with a poor diet, lack of exercise and stress. Skeptics wonder why God didn't smite Sharon for his role in the Sabra and Shatila atrocity.

[edit] January 6

  • More than 5000 demonstrators chanted slogans denouncing U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Sunni Arab leaders in Sadr City (Baghdad) after Friday prayers in a protest called by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

[edit] January 8

  • Under pressure from fellow Republicans Tom Delay stepped down as House majority leader.

[edit] January 9

  • 17 American soldiers die in Iraq, 12 in a crashing US-60 Blackhawk helicopter.
  • Gen. Ahmad Kazemi, commander of the ground forces of the Revolutionary Guards, together with his chief of operations, Gen. Saeed Soleimani, were killed in a plane crash in northern Iran.

[edit] January 10

  • Protest at the Federal Court House in Rome Georgia by the Racial Justice Campaign Against Operation Meth Merchant.

[edit] January 11

  • Australian Prime Minister John Howard hosted the meeting of the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (AP6), a.k.a. the Coalition of the Unwilling in Sydney. The six participating governments (U.S., Australia, Japan, China, South Korea and India) have either refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol or have responded to the second Bush adminsitration's efforts to undermine the only serious global warming treaty.
  • Pres. George W. Bush flip-flops on congressional hearings on his unconstitutional domestic eavesdropping program, saying that it is "good for democracy." Bush had earlier opposed the hearings.
  • U.S. CIA conducts airstrike on two houses in a village in remote northwestern Pakistan, killing 18 but failing to kill the primary target: al-Qaeda's second in command Ayman al-Zawahiri.
  • Oklahoma Christian University dropped its new policy of firing employees who get divorced.

[edit] January 14

[edit] January 15

  • Car bomb in Kandahar, Afghanistan killed three, including a senior Canadian diplomat.
  • January 15-19: Riots against UN Peacekeepers rock Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire.

[edit] January 16

  • Motorbike bomb explodes in Spinboldek, Afghanistan and kills 21.

[edit] January 17

  • Jane Goodall awarded the Legion of Honor.

[edit] January 19

  • Osama bin Laden releases another audio tape, which confirms that he is still alive and at large 4 years after 9/11.
  • V.P. Dick Cheney gives a speech defending covert domestic surveillance at the Manhattan Institute (a conservative think tank), which confirms once again that he is still alive and at large.
  • Andrew Jones, head of the legitimate sounding Bruin Alumni Association, announced that he will pay agents to monitor lectures of liberal UCLA professors who refuse to give equal time to crackpot conservative ideas. Several Bruin Alumni Association Board members jump ship.
  • Liberal Party (conservative) Australian government is battered by accusations that AWB paid enormous kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's government for wheat in the 1996-2003 UN oil-for-food program.
  • Attorney Generalissimo Alberto Gonzalez subpeonas Google to search engine records of on-line searches. Why isn't the Justice Department more interested in white collar crime? Too busy peeping in electronic keyholes?

[edit] January 20

  • French Pres. Chirac threatened retaliation against any state using terrorism against France, including the use of possible nuclear strikes. That states may deny having sponsored terrorism exposes the weakness of such threats.
  • Judge T.S. Ellis, III sentences Israeli spy Larry Franklin to 151 months in prison and fines him $10,000.
  • Islamic Jihad suicide bomber kills 19 in Tel Aviv.
  • Iranian President visits Syria. See Iranian Nuclear Crisis Timeline.
  • Gabonese Pres. Omar Bongo Ondimba appoints Eyeghe Ndong Prime Minister.
  • Rioting erupts in Marshallville, Georgia following the death of Clarence Walker, an African-Ameican, in police custody. White police chief's house is burned.

[edit] January 21

  • Attorney Generalissimo Alberto Gonzalez orders indictment of 21 animal rights activists as "terrorists." Meanwhile the United States military and intelligence agencies still have not found Osama bin Laden.

[edit] January 22

  • Shaul Mofaz, Defense Minister for nuclear armed Israel, made thinly velied threats to attack Iran if it proceeded with a nuclear program that may give it nuclear weapons.
  • Portugese presidential election.
  • Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer Jr. is found guilty of having suffocated a prisoner of war during interogation in 2003. For killing Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush during torture, Welshofer was sentenced to serve only 3 years and 3 months in prison. Well done America! No one can claim that we don't respect human life!

[edit] January 23

  • Iran responded to the the threat of military attack by Israeli Defense Minister by describing it as a form of psychological warfare.
  • Canadian general election gives the Grits (Conservative Party) something approximating an election victory. They take to 36.3% of the vote. Liberal Party wins 30.2%, New Democratic Party wins 17.5% and le Bloc Quebecois wins 10.5%.

[edit] January 25

  • Palestinian general election produces surprise Hamas election victory.
  • Pope Benedict XVI issues 71 page "God is Love" encyclical decrying sex without love as no longer integrated into our total being and no longer a vital expression of our whole being. But to paraphrase Woody Allen, as experiences that are no longer integrated etc. go, sex without love is still pretty good.

[edit] January 27

  • Hamas leaders in Gaza "go to ground" fearing they will be targeted in Israeli airborne assassinations.
  • Medical marijuana activist and former Libertarian candidate for Governor Steve Kubby was arrested in Los Angeles after returning form a 5 year exile in Canada. His oncologist worries that his rare form of cancer, pheochromocytoma, could threaten his life if he isn't allowed to continue using cannabis.

[edit] January 29

  • Conservative Italian newspaper Il Giornale reports that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi vowed that he would not have sex until the April 9 2006 general elections. Since sexually repressed Italians were probably going to vote for one of the rightist parties in his coalition government anyway, Mr. B's embarassing campaign promise seems unlikely to change the election outcome.

[edit] January 30

  • Rev. Jessie Jackson announces that he plans a Hurricane Katrina Government Response Disaster protest on March 1, 2006.

[edit] January 31

  • Coretta Scot King dies.
  • Britain cohosts international summit with the U.S. in London on problems in Afghanistan: financing development and puppet government, poverty, opium, resurging Islamist insurgency.
  • Meeting of the 5 permanent UN Security Council members in London agrees that the IAEA should report to the full UN Security Council on what Iran must do to cooperate with the agency, but not until March 6!. U.S. Secretary of State Rice apparently failed to convince them to take action sooner.
  • IED kills 100th British soldier to die in the War in Iraq, in Umm Qasr in Basra province.
  • ENRON trial opens in Houston. Former ENRON employees still hurting from house of cards corporate crime and America still hurting from the ENRON designed second Bush administration's "energy policy."

[edit] February

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[edit] February

[edit] February 2

  • The Capitol Police apologize for the idiotic decisison to arrest Cindy Sheehan after she spotted wearing t-shirts with the message "2,245 Dead. How many more?" while sitting in the House Gallery during Pres. George W. Bush's State of Union Address. Ironically the word "freedom" was used repeatedly in the speech. Beverly Young, wife of a Republican Representative from Florida, was also arrested for wearing a pro-war tee-shirt, perhaps to make it apear the Capitol Police were merely enforcing fashion rules.

[edit] February 4

  • Pentagon issues Quadrennial Defense Review.

[edit] February 5

  • Costa Rica conducts simultaneous presidential and legislative elections. Election returns reveal a tight race between Oscar Arias and Otton Solis in an election that featured low turnout, apparently in protest against recent corruption scandals.
  • Violent temper tantrums continue to erupt across the Islamic world in reponse to the publication of cartoons interpreted as blasphemous by pious fundamentalists. That female illiteracy and infant mortality rates remain scandalously high in many Islamic countries seems to occupy the minds of the faithful not at all.
  • Lacking more productive uses for their time, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff sent a letter to the Washington Post condemning a brilliant political cartoon by Tom Toles aimed at the prickly Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The Joint Chiefs demanded more sensitivity in the future. Perhaps "sensitivity" is PentagonSpeak for "self-censorship." Seems that Toles scored a direct rhetorical hit on the Gray Lady!
  • Pittsburgh defeats Seattle in the Superbowl 21 to 10.

[edit] February 6

  • Rioting in the capitals of several predominantly Islamic couintries as well as in Delhi, India to protest the publication of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad. U.S. installed Afghani President and fashionista Hamid Karzai said he had "strong objections" to the cartoons.
  • Determined to convince all non-Muslims that Islam drives otherwise sane humans over the edge, cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed demanded the execution of the cartoonist who lampooned the Prophet Muhammad. Photos of the Syrian born cleric reveal an individual with a serious weight problem.
  • Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee to answer questions about why an administration that justifies its War in Iraq and War on Terror in the name of freedom has been undertalking warantless survelliance of American citizens. "Just trust us" is the response.
  • U.S. Gen. Mark Kimmitt admits that the presence of 300,000 U.S. military personnel add to the instability in the Middle East during a speech to the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

[edit] February 7

  • Righist millennialist Rev. John Hagee estbalishes Christians United for Isreal
  • Egytian-British Islamist cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri is found guilt of inciting racial hatred.
  • Afghani police in Kabul kill 4 protesters. They give up their lives to express anger about blasphemy expressed cartoons published in distant non-Islamic country.
  • 3 killed and 11 wounded in suicide bombing of guard post outside police headquarters in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
  • French law decree permits limited stem cell research on human embryos.
  • Haitians vote in first presidential elections in six years.

[edit] February 8

  • False alarm evacuation of the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, DC when a detection device mistakenly identified nerve gas in the building.

[edit] February 9

  • Suicide bomber kills 28 people in a Shi'a religious procession marking Ashura in Hunga, Pakistan (125 miles from Islamabad). The Shi'a are an oppressed religous minority in Pakistan, as are the ethnic Shi'a Hazzara in neighboring Afghanistan.
  • Egyptian diplomat Hossam Al Musseli is kidnapped in Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City. Hamas condemns the kidnapping.
  • City of Oakland settles with anti-war demonstrators who accuse it's police of excessive force for another $393,000. That brings the total to settle the cases to $1.3 million.
  • New York Times reports that POWs are being strapped to chairs and forcefed with tubes in response to their hunger strike.
  • Feeling a desperate need to appear competent in prosecuting the "Global War on Terror," Pres. George W. Bush reveals details of a 2002 al-Qaeda plot to hijack and crash airliners into the Bank Tower or Library Tower in Los Angeles. Bush misspeaks and refers to the building as the Liberty Tower.

[edit] February 10

  • Fighting erupts between Sunni and Shi'a in Hungu, Pakistan in the aftermath of a suicide bombing on February 9. 10 more die as they exchange small arms and rocket fire.
  • Scooter Libby testifies that he was told to leak data to reporters that Iraq was trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction. Neoconservatives deceive those they consider enemies, a practice justified by Straussian philosophy.
  • NBC Nightly News runs a nakedly biased news report on anti-Winter Olympics protesters who are attacked as a "motley mix" who are a "real threat.' Could such hostile news coverage have anything to do with NBC having the rights to broadcast the Winter Olympics from Turin?
  • The second Bush administration announces plan to sell off 300,000 acres of National Forests, our American patrimony, to raise revenue needed because of its budgetary mismanagement and systemic corruption. Corrupt regimes often engage in the legal looting of state assets.

[edit] February 11

  • Sheik Abdul Rahman al-Seedes, Imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca and all round Medieval nightmare called on other countries to enact laws that condemn "insults" against the prophet Muhammad and Islamic holy sites and demanded that a certain Danish cartoonist be tried for a presumably ex post facto crime. The people of Saudi Arabia continue to suffer under the most primitive legal system on the planet and this cleric is worried about cartoons published in languages he can't understand.
  • Vice President Dick Cheney accidently shoots fellow hunter Harry Whittington, perhaps mistaking the 78 year old lawyer for a quail.

[edit] February 12

  • Happy Darwin Day!

[edit] February 13

  • Texas officials say that both V.P. Dick Cheney and his shoting victim Harry Whittington would be issued warning citations for hunting without a proper game stamp on their hunting licenses. Abiding by the law is only for little people, especially in Texas.
  • Rioting on Port au Prince, Haiti as supporters of populist oresidential candidate Rene Preval learn that he may not receive a majority of the vote and may thus have to compete against the other leading vote geter in a run-off election.

[edit] February 14

  • Riots rock the diplomatic district in Lahore, Pakistan; more Islamist political agitiation about the content of newspaper cartoons.
  • Revelations that V.P. Dick Cheney's shooting victim suffered a "minor heart attack" and that the hunters were actually shooting at just relased farm raised quail. This is what conservatives believe to be a "manly sport."

[edit] February 15

  • Three more people are killed in Pakistan in Islamist rioting about the content of cartoons. Pakistan's neo-medieval penal code makes desecration of the Koran punishable by life imprisonment and any insult to the Prophet Muhammad punishable by death.
  • Previously unpublished photos of torture at Abu Ghraib Prison appear on Australian television show Dateline. Guardian Stoy and Photos.
  • Sen. Chuck Hagel tells Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice, "I don't see, Madame Secretary, how things are getting better. I think things are getting worse. I think they're getting worse in Iraq. I think they're getting worse in Iran" during Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

[edit] February 16

  • U.S. General in Iraq admits the Iraqi Interior Ministry has been operating a Shi'a death squad. Foreshadowing of future politics in "democratic" Iraq.
  • Rene Preval is declared the elected President of Haiti.
  • Paul Avrich, historian of anarchism, dies in Manhattan.

[edit] February 17

  • Dancing in the streets of Port au Prince at the news of Rene Preval's election as President of Haiti.
  • Speaking to the National Press Club, Richard Dreyfus warned about the danger of "political hypnosis" and called for the impeachment of George W. Bush.
  • Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte and U.S. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales announce that the the Office of National Security Intelligence, part of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Intelligence Division, is the 16th member of the Intelligence Community (IC). Washington, DC just got spookier.

[edit] February 18

  • Hamas majority Palestinian parliament sworn in.
  • Italian Reform Minister and Lega Nord ras Roberto Calderoli is forced to resign after Islamist protesters attack Italian consulate in Benghazi, Libya on February 17 because of his stunt--revealing that he was wearing a tee-shirt printed with a Danish cartoon depicting the prophet Muhammad. Several die in Benghazi.

[edit] February 19

  • Rioting about "blasphemous" cartoon content in predominantly Muslim northern Nigeria causes 10 Christian churches to be burned and 16 deaths.
  • Seeking to cash in on the controversy Uttar Pradesh Minister of Minority Welfare Yaqoob Qureshi offered a $14 million reward to anyone who beheads one of the Danish cartoonists who offended tender Muslim sensibilities. So beheading a real human being is OK but cartoon images are unacceptable?

[edit] February 20

  • Venezuelan Pres. Hugo Chavez makes fun of U.S. Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice but his verbal jibes are labeled an "attack" in the U.S. press.

[edit] February 21

  • Gen. Ratko Mladic located and his surrender is negotiated.
  • 22 dead and 28 injured in car bomb blast in Baghdad.

[edit] February 22

  • Journal Health Care projects that by 2015 one-fifth of American spending will be on health care and that the health care sector will total $4 trillion.
  • Shi'a Al-Askari Mosque in Samarra, Iraq is destroyed by a bombing.

[edit] February 23

  • Iraq descends into long expected sectarian civil war as Shi'a attack dozens of Sunni mosques, kill hundreds, including Sunni clerics and prisoners in reprisal for the attack on the al-Askari Mosque. This is the bloody chaos that the neo-conservatives made inevitable with the decision to preemptively invade Iraq.
  • Israeli military kills 5 Palestinians in the Balata Refugee Camp in the West Bank.

[edit] February 24

  • Second Bush Administration Middle East Policy has collapsed: Baghdad is under daytime curfew, the Egyptian government will continue to fund the Palestinian Authority, an attack on the Abqiaq Oil Refinery in eastern Saudi Arabia drove world crude oil prices over $62 a barrel, Osama bin Laden is still alive and free, Afghanistan is a narco-state, the Iranian government appears intent on using their civil nuclear program as a cover for acquiring nuclear weapons, and Washington's neo-cons are escaping into a fantasy of liberal democratic regime change in Teheran.
  • London Mayor Ken Livingstone sanctioned by the Standards Board for England by suspension for one month in punishment for insensitive remarks directed at a Jewish reporter.

[edit] February 25

  • Iraqi government extends daylight curfew into second day but seems unable to prevent violence by Shi'a against Sunni. More death squad killings discovered.
  • Brawling erupts at ne-Nazi rally in Orlando, FL. Police make 17 arrests.

[edit] February 26

  • February 26-March 1: Deadly prison rioting at Policharki Prison in Kabul, Afghanistan.
  • Iraqi government extends daylight curfew for a third day. More bombings and killings, including 2 U.S. soldiers.
  • Anti-cartoon protests and rioting in Lahore, Pakistan led by Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) result in 70 arrests.
  • Wingnuts lose fight in California Republican Party Convention in San Jose to pass resolution with veiled criticism of opportunistic populist Republican Gov. Arnold Schwartznegger.

[edit] February 27

  • Tens of thousands of protesters against the government of Prime Minister and plutocrat Thaksin Shinawatra gather in Bangkok near Royal Palace and chant "Thaksin Get Out."
  • Wal Mart executive who enjoys generous health benefits, H. Lee Scott Jr., criticized state legislation intended to improve Wal-Mart's health benefits as scoring "short-term political points" but not solving "America's health care challenges."

[edit] February 28

  • Baghdad bombings kill 41.
  • Ehab Elmaghraby, an Egyptian national victimized by hysterical second Bush administration after 9/11, settles with the U.S. gov't for a cash award of $300,000.
  • British High Court blocs suspension of London Mayor Ken Livingstone.

[edit] March

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[edit] March

[edit] March 1

  • Pres. George W. Bush makes previouslt unannounced visit to Afghanistan. Flies into Bagram Airbase (did he visit the prisoners in the wire cages?) and helicopters into nearby Kabul. Refuses to answer a reporter's question about the worsenign situation in Afghanistan and predicts that Osama bin ladsen would not elude authorities forever.
  • Bombings kill at least 30 in Baghdad. Iraqi government forces are unable or unwilling to stop the sectarian civil war.
  • Violence narowly averted at event "organized" by College Republicans and junior wingnut The United American Committee at the University of California, Irvine.
  • In Germany a dead cat is discovered to have been infected with H5N1 (bird flu).
  • Hurricane Katrina Government Response Disaster protest march across the Crescent City Connection.
  • Colleen Carroll Campbell describes New York Senator Hillary Clinton as "shrill" twice on Fox News Live.

[edit] March 2

  • Pres. George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Singh sign a nuclear deal that rewards India for having done what Iran is condemned for attempting to do-use a civil nuclear program as cover for acquiring wherewithal to build nuclear weapons. Fait accompli.
  • Bombing at U.S. consulate in Karachi kills 4 and wounds 48 others. Pres. George W. Bush postures as standing tall and says he is still going to go on to Pakistan.
  • Video evidence confirming Pres. George W. Bush and Homeland Security Sec. Chertoff as having been warned that the levees protecting New Orleans could break exposes their lies of having been unaware of the threat. Another example of Republican factual relativism documented beyond question.
  • CBS reports that intelligence officials are reporting a possible spectacular "Big Bang" terrorist attack in Iraq against one for more high profile targets.
  • Students at Overland High School stage a walk-out in protest over the suspension of a teacher Jay Bennish for comments made about President George W. Bush. Bennish's comments on current affairs were taped by a pimply sophomore informant.

[edit] March 3

  • Continued daytime curfew in Baghdad. Keeps the foreign reporters in the Green Zone and away from the chaos and carnage.
  • Speaking to a rally of 150,000 supporters in Bangkok, Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra announces that the April 2 election will be a referendum on his leadership: "If I fail to win half the ballots, or if more than half of the voters choose to abstain, I will not become the prime minister if the people do not want me."

[edit] March 4

[edit] March 6

  • More Bombings in Baghdad and the Iraqi Parliament is called into session by Pres. Jalal Talabani to elect a government.
  • Massive street preotests in Bangkok demand resignation of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Trading volume on the Stock Exchange of Thailand declines.

[edit] March 7

  • As if the planet needed more prof that religion stimulates political extremism, 20 people were killed and 50 injured in a sectarian bombing of the Sankat Mochan Shrine in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi. Authorities fear sectarian violence between Hindus and Muslims in Uttar Pradesh.
  • Tom Delay defeats three challengers in his district's Republican Primary, taking 62% of the vote.

[edit] March 8

  • In a demonstration of the increasing incoherence of Republican culture war politics, South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds signed an abortion bill into state law that he denies actually supporting. The law makes it a felony offense for a doctor to perform an abortion unless it was necessary to save the life of a pregnant woman and excludes exceptions for rape and incest. Once again, religion stimulates political extremism.
  • Someone understands symbolic irony in Iraq. 50 employees of the al-Rawafed Security Company are kidnapped in Baghdad by people dressed as Iraqi Interior Ministry troops. Whistle blower in the Iraqi Health Ministry discloses that Shi'a pol.s ordered his ministry to stop tabulating Sunni deaths in the recent wave of killings in the country's twilight civil war. Also more bombings kill more innocents in the living nightmare created by the second Bush administration.
  • George W. Bush is saved from having to use the presidential veto by the withdrawal of Dubai Ports World from an agreement to manage 8 U.S. port facilities.

[edit] March 9

[edit] March 10

  • Dutch Court convicts nine in connection with the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. Those convicted include Mohammed Bouyeri (already serving a life sentence), Jason Walters (15 years), Ismael Aknikh (13 years) and Nouriddin el Fahtni (5 years).
  • Interior Secretary Gale Norton announces she will retire at the end of March. Knowing when to get off the ship before it sinks is an important political skill.
  • Black Republican, former deputy secretary of Health and Human Services, and recent second Bush adminsitration domestic policy advisor Claude Allen is arrested on retail theft charges.

[edit] March 11

[edit] March 12

  • Electoral Reform Demonstration in Dacca leads to arrests.
  • Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra refuses to debate his opponents live on television. Is this plutocratic arrogance or plain old fear?
  • Columbia conducts legislative elections.
  • El Salvador conducts parliamentary elections.
  • Yee-haa! Redneck wingnutfest in Memphis, TN. Republicans hold straw poll in Elvistown. Bill Frist comes in first ahead of Mitt Romney. George W. Bush and George Allen finish in third. McCain is the designated "moderate" loser. Giuliani doesn't even bother to attend.
  • Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold that he would introduce a resolution to censure George W. Bush: "The president has broken the law and, in some way, he must be held accountable."
  • Referendum opposing expansion of U.S. military base operations is approved by 87% of voters in Japanese city of Iwakuni, with a turnout of 58.6%.

[edit] March 13

[edit] March 14

  • Senate Democrats wimp out on Feingold's gutsy censure motion. National Democratic Party leadeship still in desperate need of a spinal transplant.
  • Twilight sectarian civil war continues in Iraq as 87 bodies of death squad victims are discovered in locations around Baghdad.

[edit] March 15

  • Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra hints he may step down.
  • U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice attempts to make sense of U.S. foreign policy in Indonesia.
  • U.S. escalating troop deployments to Iraq as 700 more are redeployed from Kuwait to Iraq.

[edit] March 16

  • March 16-17: Operation Swarmer in Iraqi city of Samarra used to demonstrate that highly trained Iraqi army units are capable of boarding and unboarding U.S. flown helicopters.

[edit] March 17

  • Afternoon: Chanting "Villepin, you're toast" and "contract for slavery" 120,000 students march in Paris.

[edit] March 18

  • Violent Left Bank student protests.

[edit] March 19

  • Demonstrations around the world against the War in Iraq. 10,000 march in Poretland OR, 7000 march in Chicago, 1000 in New York, 2000 in Tokyo, 1000 in Seoul.
  • 1.5 million students and youth demonstrate in Fremch cities. Organized labor and student leaders threaten general strike in France unless Chirac government withdraws its anti-job security law.

[edit] March 20

[edit] March 21

  • Protesters demanding the resignation of plutocrat Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra brings bsusiness to a halt in Bangkok's Silom Road.
  • Minor victory for free speech. Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds resigns because of her involvement in closing Internet site carrying cartoons showing the Prophet Muhammad.
  • Party primary elections held in Illinois as blizzard hits central part of the state. Governor Rod Blagojevich stomps primary challenger Chicago Alderman Edwin Eisendrath. State Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka barely defeats primary challenger Aurora business-type Jim Oberweis and Chicago business-type Ron Gidwitz.
  • Insurgent raid on Iraqi police station puts the lie to second Bush administration's claims that it is winning: 22 killed and 30 prisoners freed.

[edit] March 22

  • More evidence that Iraq is a quagmire. Second attack on Iraqi police station kills 4 in Madean, south of Baghdad.

[edit] March 24

  • Day for Latino Dignity protests punitive anti-Hispanic Georgia legislation.
  • More sectarian killings in Iraqi civil war.

[edit] March 25

  • Killing of 6 at a party in a Seattloe home remionds America of the price it pays for its "gun culture."
  • March 25-27: Pro-Immigration rallies in Los Angeles. 500,000 march in downtown Lose Angeles on Saturday, March 25! 40,000 high school students in school walk-out on Monday, March 27.

[edit] March 26

  • Afghani court drops capital charges of apostasy against Christian convert Abdul Rahman. Case exposed the hollowness of Afghanistan's "transitional democracy".
  • Police state repression of democracy demonstrations in Belarus.
  • Pro-democracy, anti-Thaksin demonstrators paralyze downtown Bangkok.

[edit] March 27

  • Stanislaw Lem dies in Krakow.
  • Ken Livingstone criticises U.S. Embassy in London for its 2005 decision not to pay the Congestion Charge. Livingstone comments that U.S. Ambassador Robert Tuttle "one of George Bush's closest cronies and a big funder of his election campaign" was trying to "skive out of (paying) like some chiselling little crook".

[edit] March 28

  • White House Chief of Staff Andy Card resigns with the second Bush adminsitration in a shambles. Replaced by Joshua B. Bolten, fresh from his impressive mismanagement of U.S. budgets as the White House budget director.
  • British Foreign Office releases foreign policy white paper Active Diplomacy for a Changing World.
  • National Strike in France to protest conservative dismantling of sucessful social programs.
  • 17th Knesset election in Israel with no major party promising peace. Decade after decade of vigorous government efforte devoted to nationl security and yet that's exactly what cannot be had. Centrist Kadima supplants Likud and Jabotinsky rolls over in his grave.
  • Caspar Weinberger dies.

[edit] March 29

  • Exiled Liberian president and oindicted war criminal Charles Tayor arrested in Nigeria while attempting to cross border into Cameroon.
  • President George W. Bush meets with President Vicente Fox and Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Cancun, Mexico. Bush is worried because the issues raised by large scale Mexican and other Latin American immigration is causing the Repubican Party national machine to fragment.

[edit] March 30

  • Scheduled meeting of Foreign Ministters in Germany to discuss Iranian nuclear proliferation.
  • Canadian soldier wounded by suicide bomber in Kandahar.
  • Kidnapped reporter Jill Carroll released.
  • Oil rises to $66 a barrel.
  • Gallup releases January to March 2006 poll figures indicating more Amercians describe themselves as Democrats (49%) than as Republicans (42%). Independents come in at 34%.
  • Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rules that nonresident gays may not marry in Massachusetts.
  • Charles McArthur Emmanuel, a.k.a. Charles "Chuckie" Taylor Jr., a.k.a. son of former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor was arrested at Miami International Airport after flying in from Trinidad.

[edit] March 31

  • Underachiever U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice encounters "Go Home" anti-war protest in Blackburn, Jack Straw's "home town."
  • Boston Roman Catholic Archdiocese newspaper The Pilot fires photographer Peter Smith for taking photo of Justice Antonin Scalia performing rude Italian "don't care" chip flip.
  • University of Nebraska receives letter from the Nebraska office of the Deprtment of Homeland Security notifying it that its H-1B application for Bolivian academic Waskar Ali to teach as an assistant professor in the departments of history and ethnic studies is undergoing security checks and is awaiting review and clearance.

[edit] April

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[edit] April

[edit] April 1

  • U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is confronted with protesters peace and human rights everywhere she turns in Britain.

[edit] April 2

  • Bullwinkle says: "Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat." Rocky responds: "That trick never works." Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Minister Jack Straw pay a surprise visit to Baghdad in what has become a very tired neocon gambit, with the appearance of activity offered as a substitute for real results.
  • 54% of French respondents poll vocie support for student groups and labor unions against the First Jobs Contract (CPE) law the conservative Gaullist government is attempting to impose on an unwillign populace.
  • Republican presidential hopeful John McCain performs embarrassing pathetic on-air flip-flip on NBC's Meet the Press by saying that the Christian Right has a major role to play in the Republican Party. Defending his about-face McCain says, "I think most Americans will judge me by my entire record." He may find that is true.
  • Parliamentary election in Thailand alcks legitimacy. Snap election was called by plutocratic Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra on February 24. Thaksin wins but against an opposition that has boycotted the election.

[edit] April 4

  • British double agent in the Provisional IRA Denis Donaldson is killed.
  • 22 Wisconsin towns and villages vote for pull-out in anti-Iraq war referenda. 68% of Madison WI votes for pulloutand 75% of Hayward WI votes for pullout.
  • Tom DeLay lets it be known publicly that he wil be stepping down as Republican candidate for Texas's 22nd Congressional District seat. Does he imagine that he hears the gavel coming down on the hammer? His future plans include avoiding prison and joining Next Gingrich and other Washington insiders as a lobbyist.
  • Fox News Channel "Dayside" archors are too discombobulated by live video feed of massive protests in Paris that they can't focus on the task of explaining away Tom DeLay's cowardly conservative flight from the possibility of losing the TX-22 to a Democrat. The usual rhetoric of sneering arrogance and prissy superiority fails them as they quiver before the image a people in revolt!
  • Massachusetts State House votes 154 to 2 and State Senate votes 37 to 0 to require that nearly all state residents have health insurance.

[edit] April 5

  • National Tomb Sweeping Day in Taiwan.

[edit] April 6

  • Georgia Representative Cynthia McKinney apologises for striking a Capital Police officer with her cell phone in an altercation.
  • Second Bush administration loses last drop of credibility whn it is learned that the White House authorized selective leaking of information by Scooter Libby to reporters.

[edit] April 7

  • Republican majority in U.S. Senate fails to pass new immigration legislation, perhaps a lost opportunity in what Sen. Bill Frist sees as his road to the White House in 2008. * April * April 7: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi describes his supporters an "army of freedom" in a general election campaign. What about a "March on Rome?"
  • National Union legisltor Mario Pivaral is assassinated in Guatemala City.
  • Suicide bombing at the Sh'ia Buratha mosque in northern Baghdad kills 79 people and wounds 160.

[edit] April 8

  • Bombing at Sh'ia shrine kills 4 and wounds 15.
  • Two al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades militants killed in Israeli air strike in eastern Gaza City.
  • Campaigning is suspended in the pre-election day of reflection in Italy.

[edit] April 9

  • Italy conducts parliamentary elections.
  • Pathological cycle of violence between Israelis and Palestinians continues as Hamas vows to avenge deaths of 15 killed by Israeli air strikes over the weekend.
  • Immigrant Rights Protests in San Antanio and Miami.

[edit] April 10

  • Immigrant Rights Protests in Washington, DC and New York.
  • French President Chirac and Prime Minister de Villepin cave to massive popular street protests and withdraw the proposed CPE legislation.

[edit] April 11

  • Election returns relased showing that the Center-Left Party Coalition of Romano Prodi defeated Rightist Coalition of Silvio Berlusconi. Megalomanical billionaire Berlusconi pouts in an unmanly fashion.
  • LCN kingpin Bernardo Provenzano finally arrested in Corleone.
  • Immigrant Rights Protests in California: Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Oxnard, Santa Maria, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Bakersfield, Fresno and Sacramento.
  • British Labour Party MP Gerald Kaufman called for trials either in Britain or before an international tribunal for those accused of killing International Solidarity Movement activist Tom Hurndall and filmmaker James Miller in 2003. Economic sanctions against Israel may be necessary unless the Israeli Army perps are put on trial.
  • Premature ejaculation in Tehran as Iranian president claims that his country has joined the nulcear club.
  • Shi'a Islamist Suicide bombing kills 57 in Suuni prayer meeting in Karachi, Pakistan.
  • Soccer mom Francine Busby advances to Democratic Party Primary Run-off Election in the 50th Congressional District in California to fill the seat formerly held by military hero, antique collector, bribe taker, tax cheat, and all around disgraced Republican Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunnignham.

[edit] April 12