Saturday, April 06, 2002

Remora

Limited Inc is boiling with indignation about the Middle East, and Bush, and Tony Blair (the Daily Mirror supposedly headlined their story about Blair's visit to Bush's ranch, Howdy, Poodle), but what the hell? We don't write well in the boiling mood. Ice, we prefer lots of ice in the veins. Besides, any piker with a clicker can move around the Web and compose an editorial view for himself, re the multifarious failures of US foreign policy this week. We will add our tinsel thunder to the obvious, soon enough, but not every day is a good day to go all red in the face.

Limited Inc, instead, wants our readers to head over to a very nicely put together site about Dublin history put together by a Ken Finlay. We haven't explored the entire site (which seems to be a huge enterprise with links to a couple of very hard to acquire texts of Dubliniana) since we don't have that much time -- after all, there are only 200 more shopping days to Christmas. But we did take a look at Letters and Leaders of My Day, a book of reminiscences by Tim Healy. We love the way Healy begins his story on a cheerful note:



In 1862 (when I was seven) my father left Bantry, Co. Cork, on being appointed Clerk of Union at Lismore, Co. Waterford. The retiring clerk, J. C. Hennessy, had been promoted to Waterford Union because of a tragedy which afterwards became the plot of a novel. In outline the story ran that the wife of Richard Burke, Clerk of Waterford Union, sickened and died about 1960. Her burial at the family graveyard, Kilsheelan, Co. Tipperary, was attended by the husband, who in apparent sorrow stayed that evening with her sister. Their converse meanwhile was friendly, yet in the"dead waste and middle of the night "the sister thundered at his door, "Get up, you murderer, you poisoned my sister! Get up! Get out!"

A dream, according to the whispers of the village, had inspired her. Burke tried to pacify the woman, but the only answer she made was: "Get out of my house! You killed my sister!" Then without giving him time to dress, she bundled him into the street.

In his night-shirt Burke made his way to the police-barracks, and was there accommodated till day broke. Then the sister accused him to the police of the murder of his wife, and demanded that the body should be exhumed. This was duly reported to Dublin Castle, but Burke was not arrested. Inquiries, however, were set afoot, and the Government gave permission to open the grave so that an inquest might be held. The husband nonchalantly attended the Coroner's inquiry. He drove to it from Waterford in a hired car, and the driver related that, where a view of the River Suir met his eyes, he declaimed, "Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain," at full length.

At the inquest the doctor declared his suspicions, but medical knowledge as to poisons was not then exact. As he was unable to pronounce positively on the cause of death, the stomach was removed and sent in a jar to the Cork Queen's College. There the analyst put the jar into the laboratory, but before he could examine it, the place was burnt down. To rebuild the laboratory a vote of
Parliament was necessary, and the British Treasury was not to be hurried. When the delay in providing money ended, workmen set about clearing the foundations, and a pickaxe struck a jar in the d�bris which emitted a peculiar sound. It was lifted out, unbroken, and the analyst identified it as the jar sent to him the year before containing the stomach of Mrs. Burke.

On examining the contents he certified that arsenic was present in the stomach in fatal quantities, and after a long delay the Tipperary coroner reassembled the jury

Meanwhile the police learnt that Burke had been friendly with a nurse in Waterford Union. They also heard from a pauper-assistant there that he had been seen to take a white powder from a vessel on the shelves of the pharmacy. So the Coroner's jury brought in a verdict of wilful murder against him, and Burke was arrested and put on trial before Baron Deasy at Clonmel Assizes in 1862. Confident of acquittal, he issued invitations to his friends to dine with him at an hotel in Waterford after the trial. Nevertheless, Burke was found guilty. Thousands flocked to see him hanged. His execution made the vacancy in the clerkship of the Waterford Union to which the Lismore Clerk, Hennessy, was elected. The coming of my father from Bantry to take the latter's place brought me as a child to Co. Waterford."

Limited Inc has some colorful stories about our father. But, well, when we were seven our father moved down to Atlanta to work on Carrier HVAC equipment. As far as we know, the way to his advancement was not preceded by poisoning, stabbing, adultery, or fraud. We feel left out.


Friday, April 05, 2002

�Someone left the cake out in the rain��

Do you feel it? That auld MacArthur Park melancholy. In the spring of 1980, or was it 1981? In any case, Limited Inc remembers manning the paint counter at a Shreveport hardware store listening to Donna Summer dirging for this enigmatic gateau, since the radio station that was piped in for our customers� shopping pleasure was very big on Donna Summer. Is it an illusion, or is that same sweet sadness abroad in the US press? a feeling that the splendid little war our commander in chief, bless his 80 percent in the polls, has been all set to spring on Iraq, is now being derailed by a bunch of wankers over there in the Holy Land. I mean, the NYT, and in the Washington Post haven�t quite been open about it � rather, it�s the little asides, the way Tony Blair, for instance, seems to be abandoning ship at the very time we need him to buck us up, or the way the cartoon cutups at the Arab Summit mainstreamed the odious little Iraqis. And Kuwait, my God, what podunk little speed-trap in that whole damn sandbox owes us more? And here they are, closing off the pool, so sorry, boss, find some other place to stage your troops from.

I don't think that I can take it
'Cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again�

Here�s atypical analysis in the WP from a couple of days ago:


�In the past few days, the president has defended himself against the sharpest criticism of his conduct of foreign policy since the attacks of Sept. 11. He and his advisers now must reckon with the prospect that the Middle East conflict will force a delay in, or substantial changes to, the next phase of the war on terrorism -- apparently aimed at Iraq -- that they have been planning for months.�

For months, folks! All that brain power � and George W. can�t really afford to waste too much brain power � and now the bastards are screwing everything up. The problem is that there are so many of them. We�d love Sharon to make the area Palestinian-rein, but it would be hard to hide the deaths of 2 million. And there are a lot of bleeding hearts out there, lefties and pinkos who will be in the streets, unappreciative that this genocide�s for you.

Yes, for months. The maps, the mock deployment of soldiers (all crafted in plastic and standing 1 ��� high, no doubt, for the president to, um, manipulate at his leisure late at night in the White House basement), the tough talk. It is so unfair!


And here�s the Times way of describing the trip of Tony Blair, who as late as last week was our well beloved sycophant, to the Crawford ranch:


Britain has scuttled plans to publish an intelligence dossier on Iraq's secret arms programs that it had planned to release on Washington's behalf. And Mr. Blair, traveling to Crawford, Tex. on Friday in his favorite role as the bridge between Europe and the United States, is confronting a gap so wide that it now prevents him from openly backing an American attack on Iraq.

"I think so far Blair has gotten away with being pro-American and a loyal European and not having to choose because America has not done something that is so awful that, if he supports the U.S., he will lose Europe," said Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform. "But the Middle East is possibly more dangerous for him now than Iraq, because public opinion across Europe is very, very anti-Israeli, and people all think the U.S. can do something about it. It's the time for Tony Blair to be constructively critical, to be a candid friend."

Yes, our commander in chief, mistaking his office for another episode in that quiz show, Family Feud, has really, really been looking forward to some kind of fall theater in Iraq. Like football, it would have been. His heroic stature in the polls, and the Democrats, the same old numbnuts, kowtowing to any expression of American imperial power we were crazy enough to come up with: yes, Peter, Tom, Dan, we are solidly behind the President�s decision to massacre Iraqi prisoners of war in order to avoid future American casualties.

It�s all a big dilemma, as Laura would put it � my God, that woman�s vocabulary! On the one hand, Sharon is clearly insane. As in, at some point that man was clearly bitten by a rabid dog. Hasn�t anybody noticed? His idea of peace has been, consistently, the peace of the grave, on which he could dance, while somebody else wrote the epitaph for the Palestinian �savages.� On the other hand, Mr. Sharon is backed by a powerful, although equally insane, contingent in the Republican party. Powerful, that is, in D.C. The truth is, the main body of the GOP could care less. But the clique around the Weekly Standard, which has become, by the weird alchemistry of betrayal (remember their early embrace of McCain?), the press chorus of the Bushie crowd � and this is of some importance, these people being heavily networked � are all set on killing that Arafat. They have no endgame. Implicitly, they would like the genocide option for the Palestinians mulled over. Perhaps they could be sold into slavery? Ashcroft of course would approve of that: talk about making those genuine reconstructions of Civil War battles even more genuine! But because of the climate of moral looseness since the sixties, the slide in family values, feminism, enviro-nazis, and squishy pinks, we know that isn�t going to happen. So really, the counsels of such bozos as William Krystol are singularly short of an endgame. At least George Will, in a recent column, came out foresquare for the only one consistent with the Sharon plan: the conquest of the West Bank and its annexation to Israel.

Well, our commander in chief isn�t the smartest boy in the class, but even he knows that is stupid. History is not going to rewind, suddenly, to the glorious colonial period when we kept wogs in their places, no matter what Will thinks, sitting in his little Virginia faux plantation. And then there is the little matter of oil. Today, a story from the AP that assures us that the possibility of an oil embargo is remote. And Limited Inc agrees that an oil embargo on the scale of the one that followed Nixon�s weird all points surrender to Israel�s demands in 1973 is unlikely to happen. For one thing, since then, the sheiks have so mismanaged their money that they would be hurt by any downturn in the EU and the USA�s economic indicators. Still, they would certainly do it to save themselves from the Shah�s fate.

And that fate, whether Bush likes it or not, is looming, as he simplemindedly cuts off every Middle East ally the US ever bribed into compliance with our provincial interests. (As a side observation: if Egypt blows up, does anybody really think Israel is going to benefit? Only that Masada strain in the Likud, which Sharon rather likes: toughen up the youth, or something like that.) God loves fools, and who knows, with an idiot at the wheel, we might avoid collisions that a more experienced, a more intelligent leader could not avoid. But the cosmic license that fools enjoy isn�t guaranteed. Bush is definitely on a political holiday, right now, especially for a man who slunk into office illegitimately, and has ruled like a corrupt CEO ever since. His opposition has all the backbone of a wet sand castle, which definitely helps him. Right now, with the emotion that still roils the American populace in the wake of 9/11, Bush can get away with things that in normal times would make his credit plummet in this country. He has, of course, blown it in other countries. But here�s a cruel fact: American interests aren�t the same as Israeli interests. The blowing up of caf�s in Jerusalem, like the blowing up of parlimentarians in New Delhi, is criminal; as, actually, is the assassination of Palestinian youth by the Israeli military (collateral casualties, alas, as the boys in Foreign Service say, going down to the lounge for their scotches). The US interest here, is partly moral, and partly structural: it is time to figure out how to establish institutions that will satisfy both the Israeli and the Palestinian thirst for justice (or, more vulgarly, revenge). This isn�t going to happen if the US doesn�t lean fairly heavily on Sharon. And if, instead of continually, self righteously, calling for Arafat to stop the suicide bombers, the American pitch was also for guaranteeing Palestinian rights �as in property rights, rights to be free from search and seizure of property, etc., etc. That would probably require setting up some kind of intra-state judicial system � in other words, some independent judiciary that could punish aberrant Israeli soldiers and Palestinian franc-tireurs alike.

LI makes this suggestion in the full realization that the sensible thing isn�t going to happen. The situation has really spiraled beyond the point at which liberal, Montesquieu like gestures are going to work. But somebody has to be out there, promoting whacky, stupid, sensible things. One obvious fact about the Israel-Palestine conflict is that, left wholly to the mechanism of the blood feud, it will never stop.


Thursday, April 04, 2002

Remora



Well, well. Limited Inc loves capitalism -- sometimes. The bottom line graphs, in its sphere, the very heartbeat of reason (though,as a proper lefty, we don't like to admit this too often). A Financial Times editorial sums up what is happening in Israel with admirable perspicacity. That means, companeros, that it adumbrates the essence of the 'wet' position, as Maggie Thatcher might have put it. Thatcher, of course, before she was the iron lady, was very much the dry lady. Dry down to the grayish bone. Acidulous, even.

Well, here is the first killer graf. This reads like something from Limited Inc.

"Ariel Sharon has embarked on a military folly that bears disturbing resemblance to his ill-fated 1982 invasion of Lebanon. The US, which was seen by many at the time to have given Israel at least an amber light to pursue its destructive Lebanon war, should not repeat the same mistake. For Israel's sake, Washington must intervene to halt Mr Sharon's widening reoccupation of territories under Palestinian control."

Now -- why is it that not a single major American paper can see that? Is it some collective blindness, some 9/11 side effect? To ram home FT's point, and our own, let's throw in the last three grafs. As FT gets going, the City's apologist for an optimal level of profit makes an unusual amount of sense. In fact, LI is a little puzzled -- is this a major financial newspaper, or Liberation?

"The inconsistencies of the US approach are owed to a merging of the Middle East crisis into the global war against terrorism. Yet the current conflict is part of a more-than-50-year dispute that, by the US's own admission, must end with the establishment of a viable Palestinian state.

Moreover, in the past 18 months of bloodshed and violence, tragic human rights violations have been perpetrated by both sides, with Palestinians bearing the brunt of the killings. Washington's friends in Europe should press for a wiser US approach and for immediate US pressure on Israel.

This is the most helpful message Tony Blair could carry to his meeting with Mr Bush in Texas later this week. The best way to help Israel today is to stop Mr Sharon from pursuing another senseless war."

Aaaahhhhhh. Precisely. How depressing that the obvious is, in these troubled times, also the subversive.


Wednesday, April 03, 2002

Remora

McDonald's, McDonald's.

Do read the story of the bad burger in the NYT today. A Chilean woman named Carmen Calderon went into a McDonald's to complain that her son had gotten sick after eating some Mickey D special. Some employee said look, it is cleaner here than in your house. Calderon then went to the municipal health agency, got them to make a sweep of the place. And Mickey D's responded by suing Ms. Calderon for 1.25 million dollars.

Is this typical or what?

"Because one of the icons of globalization is involved, the dispute has become a cause c�l�bre in Chile. McDonald's says it is merely trying to defend its reputation against a slander, but consumer advocates see sinister motives at work.

"McDonald's doesn't have a prayer of collecting this money, so it is clear that what they really want is to send a message to every consumer in Chile," said Luis J�rez, legal director of the National Consumer Service, a government agency. "What they are saying to consumers is this: watch your step, be careful, think twice before you criticize us, because you'll get in trouble with the law."

McDonald's loves to do this kind of thing. Remember the McLibel suit? When Mickey D for Devil spent 38 million dollars going after two unemployed, pamphleteering activists in court in Britain? It was a circus: the two activists ran circles around the big corp, even going so far as to dig up a repentent Ronald McDonald. The guy in the clown suit wept for the slaughter of bovine innocents, of which he'd been the tool, as well as subtly directing the fragile infantile libido to alluring images of a bunch of animated dead animal sandwiches, fetishs the young tikes will take years to get over, if ever. Yes, tears, gentle tears, folks. The two activists now run a website, the Mcspotlight, which hoards anti-McDonald's news, along with the exhaustive and exhausting trial transcript of the whole bloody trial, which lasted years, and supposedly cost McDonald's 38 million dollars. Sad thing about the site is that you get the feeling, this was it for those two. The high point. The thing they can't get over. And the exploitation of it, even for the goodly purpose of throwing rocks at this mega-corps -- well, it isn't like this is Gandhi in India, exactly. To be an activist and to hit the exacta like that -- and then the life afterwards, in the guttering light of that thrill...

Years ago, my friend D. surreptitiously took a job at a Mickey D's. His junk food gig coincided with my arrival in town. I'd made the long trek from Santa Fe to New Haven. D. had promised me that when I arrived, we'd both get jobs as garbage men. This turned out to be rank optimism, on D.'s part, since the township of West Haven, as a matter of fact, was not keeping slots warm for us on one of their primo garbage trucks. Just as well, I guess. So there I was, Limited Inc., staying at D.'s place, which was the downstairs part of a house owned by a German ex-maid. Because D. was afraid that the maid didn't want me in his quarters -- I don't know, her paranoia, his rent, some concantenation of bad circs and money troubles -- he encouraged me to sort of hide by day. For instance, remaining in a closet might be a good idea, he hinted. Or had I thought of wandering aimlessly between the hours of dawn and sunset through the friendly streets of West Haven? Then he'd annouce that he had to do some task he couldn't talk about, and disappear. Eventually I wormed it out of him. He said that it was a pretty cool job. The employees value added to the pittances they were making, hourly, by boosting boxes of patties and buns. Easy way to do this was to hoist one of the boxes into the dumpster out back, then retrieve it and go home with it. Although I thought, theoretically, that the company should be bled in this way, given their adamant resistance to paying a living wage, on a more practical level I couldn't help but worry that diffusing the patties among the kids at home might not be the healthiest thing a parent can do.

Tuesday, April 02, 2002

Remora


Literally hundreds of my readers have been writing in demanding that I compare, point for point, Edmund Spenser's A Veue of the Present State of Ireland with the current discourse in the press about the 'terroristic" Palestinians.

Okay, okay, maybe not literally hundreds. Maybe LI doesn't even have hundreds of readers.

But still, if hundreds had written in to suggest this idea, it would have made sense to me. Since many of the rhetorical arguments rehearsed, in Spenser's text, to justify the English occupation of Irish territory and the abridgment of Irish rights, under common law, up to and including seizure of property, imprisonment, and death, resurface periodically like a chronic neural disease in the Western body. LI was thinking about this while perusing the bloodier effusions of the Washington Posts marching corps of conservative apologists, especially Michael Kelly and the always delightful Charles Krauthammer. For instance, here is Chalie me darlin' talking about the kvetching bolshies and the war:

"Just five days into the war, for example, Mary Robinson, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, demanded that U.S. bombing stop so she and her indispensable cohort could feed the hungry. Had we listened to them, tens of thousands of Afghans would have died. As it was, the bombing defeated the Taliban -- whose cruel and catastrophic misrule was the source of the famine -- and thus saved the Afghans from starvation.

By year's end, with Afghanistan liberated and the Bill of Rights still intact, the opposition moved on. To military tribunals.Alas, no luck. And no legs. Americans have not much appetite for giving al Qaeda the run of a massive judicial apparatus designed for those who live by the American Constitution. They sensibly want to keep the number of years-long, jury-endangering, media-circus civilian trials for terrorists down to the bare minimum. Already three -- John Walker Lindh, American Taliban; Zacarias Moussaoui, "20th hijacker"; and Richard Reid, shoe bomber -- will enjoy O.J. levels of media coverage."

This is amazingly good stuff. I love the moral outrage about the Taliban's cruelty to the Afghans -- a cruelty rediscovered, with alacrity, after 9/11, by the same people who were, well, a little blind to it before. Before then, of course, there was, shall we admit it? a bit of softness for the Taliban on the right. A bit of admiration for this offshoot of the one good war, the Gippers war in Afghanistan. This article in Counterpunch quotes a 1997 London Telegraph story about Texas hospitality and the Taliban, at that time the legitimate guv, or so it seemed, sitting on a strategic area that Unocol in particular would like to put an oil pipeline through. According to that article, the "Taliban was learning how the "other half lives," and according to The Telegraph, "stayed in a five-star hotel and were chauffeured in a company minibus." The Taliban representatives "...were amazed by the luxurious homes of Texan oil barons. Invited to dinner at the palatial home of Martin Miller, a vice-president of Unocal, they marveled at his swimming pool, views of the golf course and six bathrooms." Mr. Miller, said he hoped that UNOCAL had clinched the deal.

Dick Cheney was then CEO of Haliburton Corporation, a pipeline services vendor based in Texas. Gushed Cheney in 1998, "I can't think of a time when we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian. It's almost as if the opportunities have arisen overnight. The good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go. But we go where the business is."

As the Good Lord's son said, though, the wind blows where it listeth. Or time and tide wait for no man. Or something like that. In any case, we shouldn't underestimate the revelation that Krauthammer is four square against mass starvation. This is a distinct softening of the Bush's favorite organ, the heart-- it is even, dare I say it, compassionate conservativism at work. That Krauthammer now believes that the mass starvation of those without the law is, well, plumb wicked, is a step up the moral ladder. Isn't that Maslow's term? Soon, who knows, he might come out with some aberrant position against taking the bread from the mouths of orphans. I doubt it, however. There's a coloring, in that phrase, of the dread welfare state. Don't want that back, do we?

But this is mere icing on the cake. What we really, really love is CK's irritated assent to the jury tradition in common law. He of course knows that it is a bad thing, an encouragement to minorities to get uppity, and an impediment to throwing people in jail without having them get all that publicity. The Argentine military had a way of handling these things that, in grave times, one has to admire. It causes a guy like Krauthammer extreme pain to see the guilty being accorded rights. Rights, of course, are for the non-guilty. Silly. All the fault of the Warren court. But goddamn it, let's not start giving everybody rights. That would definitely be the decline of civilization, or the triumph of the wogs, one. Incidentally, we love the 20th hijacker label too, especially since the guy inconveniently didn't hijack anything. Luckily, in the current climate in America, a middle eastern sympathizer with Satan isn't going to get away with not hijacking an airplane -- he's obviously guilty, in his dreams, and so let's hang him high. That the death penalty is shirked at for people who, uh, haven't hijacked planes but wanted to is the kind of lily livered thing lefties are famous for. Along with their well known affection for sher'ia. How this coheres with their other affections (for lesbians and gays and environazis and degenerate art) is a question for the psychoanalyst more than for poor CK. He's a simple guy, who knows perversion when he smells it.

Ah, and this takes us back to our man Spenser: compare the rantings of Krauthammer with this oaken appeal to sophistry in the service of imperial power in VPSI. The Speakers in this dialogue are colloquying together about the Irish, and in the course of this dialogue an astonishing number of the myths that have justified occupations, imperialism, and the unequal treatment of peoples in their own Heimat are, if not shaped for the first time, at least collected together. In particular, Spenser comes up with a mythical history about the English ownership of Ireland, which was apparently conceded to the English long ago, and the craft of the natives, who hied to the hills in the fourteenth century and waited until the War of the Roses distracted the noble Brits. Then, you know it, bingo, like white on rice, the so called natives are all over the true possessors of the land. There is much in this story that corresponds to the Israeli myth that the Palestinians just picked up and fled in '48, without the stimulus of the Israeli militia. And in the same way that myth relies on two natural characteristics of the native -- cowardice and craftiness -- so, too, it feeds into the justification for inequity in the justice system. A la our man Krauthammer.

"Iren: The comon law is, as I before said, of it selfe most rightfull and verie convenient, I suppose, for the kingdom for which it was first devized; for this, I thinke, as yt seemes reasonable, that out of the manners of the people, and abuses of the countrie, for which they were invented, they tooke theire first begynninge, for else they should be most unjust: for no lawes of man, accordinge to the straight rule of right, are just, but as in regard of the evills which they prevent, and the safetie of the common weale which they provide for. As for example, in the true ballancinge of Justice, it is a flatt wrong to punishe the thought or purpose of any, before it be enacted: for true justice punisheth nothing but the evill acte or wycked worde, yet by the lawes of all kingdomes it is a capitall cryme, to devise or purpose the death of the King: the reason is, for that when such a purpose is effected, it should be too late to devise of the punishment therof, and should turne that common-weale to more hurt by suche losse of theire Prince, then suche punishment of the malefactors. And therefore the lawe in that case punishes his thought: for better is a mischief, then an inconvenience. So that jus polliticum, though it be not of it selfe just, yet by applicacon, or rather necessitie, it is made just; and this only respect maketh all lawe just. Nowe then, if these lawes of Ireland be not likewise applied and fitted for that Realme, they are sure verie inconvenient.

Eudox: You reason stronglie; but what unfitness doe you fynde in them for that Realme? shewe us some
particulers.

Iren: The common lawe appointeth that all trialls, aswel of crymes as titles and ryghtes, shall be made
by verdict of Jurye, chosen out of the honestist and most substancal free-holders: Nowe all the ffree-holders of that Realme are Irishe, which when the cause shall fall betwene an Irishe man and an Englyshe, or betwene the Quene and any ffreeholder of that countrye, they make no more scruple to passe against the Englisheman or the Quene, though it bee to strain theire oaths, then to drinke milke unstrayned. So that before the jury goe togeather, it is all to nothing what theire verdict will be. The tryall thereof have I so often sene, that I dare confidentlie avouche the abuse thereof: Yet is the lawe of it selfe, as I said, good; and the first institucon thereof being given to all Englishemen verie rightfull, but nowe that the Yrishe have stepped in to the rowmes of the Englishe, who are nowe become so hedefull and provident to keepe them forth from thensforth, that they make no scruple of conscience to passe against them, it is good reason that either that corse of the Lawe for trialls be altered, or that other provision for juries be made.

In other words -- by all means have trials, if the guilty verdicts are assured. Otherwise, trialls must be altered. So let's have some tribunal action, or fix the juries. Otherwise Krauthammer is going to be looking for lefties under his bed. .



The query letter gag: an American tale

  The “sell your novel tool-kit.” The “How to write Irresistable Query Letters”. The “50 Successful Query Letters”. The flourishing subgen...