News Wears Short Shorts

Brandon Ferguson, News Editor

Honey, I Think We’re Lost

The Roadmap to Peace for a free Palestinian state faces a potential roadblock in Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon’s own right-wing Likud party. The party refuses to remove a single
Israeli settler from land occupied since the 1967 Middle East war, but Sharon has promised to
support US President George W. Bush’s plan to compensate 8,000 settlers in land that would
be returned to Palestine.

The Likud party now wishes to build 1,000 more settlement homes.

“According to the roadmap, settlement activity should be stopped,” Palestinian Prime
Minister Ahmed Quereia told reporters. “Any (plans for) enlarging or expanding the settle-
ments is an act that not only does not serve, but is a total departure from the peace process.”

Before commenting on the possible expansion of settlements, a White House spokesper-
son said they would first need a “clear definition” of expansion.

So the Likud party won’t support Sharon who’s supporting Bush who supports Sharon out
of habit but needs Sharon to support peace for Palestine so Bush can seem sensitive to a
Muslim nation—any Muslim nation—in order to justify the moral crusade in Iraq.

Sometimes politics just gets in the way of things.

 

 

Museums Are Cool

Those visiting the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway on August 22 can’t say that art is dull. At
11am Sunday, two armed men stole two of Edward Munch’s famous paintings, “Madonna” and
§ most notably “The Scream.” A security guard was held hostage while the second thief pulled
the paintings from the walls. Only a thin wire was used to hold the paintings in place, leading
to calls for art security to be beefed up around Europe.

Ten years earlier, during the Olympics in Norway, another of the four versions of “The
Scream” was stolen and held for a $1 million ransom. The painting remained missing for three
~ months before eventually being found in a hotel room.

Given the $100 million-plus value of the 1893 painting that began the 20th Century’s
Expressionist movement, it is unlikely to be sold on any market, and authorities feel confident
that they will catch the perpetrators.

If you have any information on the whereabouts of these paintings, then your criminal
friends are way cooler than mine.

 

Arms Laid Down, Heads Held High

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani returned from Britain, where he was receiving heart treatment, to
broker a peace agreement between the Iraqi government and cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s militia on
August 26.

Ayatollah al-Sistani, the most influential Shiah cleric in Iraq, is considered American-friend-
ly. While out of the country, al-Sadr held a three-week standoff sleepover party in Najaf, holed
up in the holy Imam Ali mosque. While the cat’s away the mouse will pray (for the deaths of
many American infidels).

Upon his arrival in Basra, Ayatollah al-Sistani traveled the 350 km north to Najaf, amassing
thousands of followers along the way who assembled on the outskirts of the holy city. US troops
will withdraw from Najaf upon the orders of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, and the government 7]
has no plans to arrest al-Sadr for his probable role in the assassination of a rival cleric last year.

So the Ayatollah is the hero who wins the government’s favour—which shows the world
that the newly independent Iraqi council can lead the country on its own—while getting al-Sadr
off the hook for riling up the Shiite passions and killing many US soldiers and Iraqi citizens, con-
veniently while the Ayatollah was too far away and too ill to do anything about a young, renegade
freedom fighter. And...scene.

 

einer sae OWNEPPPESS | 7