This past week may well have been too depressing on a global level to produce a solid article, much less one that’s replete with the requisite amount of Swiftian satire and jokes about people’s naughty-bits that you, my loyal 20-25 readers, have come to expect from me. However, I’m going to take a stab at it anyway and therefore, without any further pomp and circumstance, here is the week in review:
On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court slashed $2.9 billion in damages against the Exxon Mobil Corporation for that little tanker spill the Exxon Valdez had in 1989. The oil giant now only has to pay $507 million in punitive damages to meet the amount of compensatory damages that they have already paid to “fix up” the 1,200 miles of Alaskan coastline they drenched in oil. Is the legalese getting to you a little bit? Let me put it this way: Before Wednesday’s decision, every one of the 32,000 individuals whose lives were directly and drastically affected by the spill would have received $75,000 in compensation from Exxon Mobil. With this new settlement everybody gets about $16,000 in compensation. Did I mention that the region’s fishing based economy is still irreparably damaged and that everyone in the area is fiscally fucked? God, don’t you love it when Big Oil wins. It’s just so heartwarming to see the little guy get knocked on his ass by the highest court in the land and a massive corporation at the same time. Oh, also on Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled that giving the death penalty to child rapists was unconstitutional. When the Supreme Court vindicates child rapists and Exxon Mobil on the same day, that means it’s time to head over to Wal-Mart and grab another red, white, and blue magnetic ribbon for your Chevy Silverado. Ain’t this country the shit?
Then, on Friday, the Supreme Court ruled with a 5-to-4 majority that the right to bear arms is not a collective right, as has been the prevailing wisdom for the past seventy years, but is an individual right. This of course makes perfect sense when you hear the majority’s explanation, written by Justice Antonin Scalia that says, “The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.” This is only logical coming from Scalia, a man who claims to be an Originalist who views the constitution as a document that should be interpreted as if it were being read by reasonable persons alive at the time of its inception. Clearly, a reasonable man in 1787 would read the Second Amendment (which for those of you with hazy memory of high school civics and U.S. government, states that, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed,” ), ponder it over for a moment, and reasonably conclude that it meant that all citizens had the right to a .357 Magnum, and that the whole bit about militias didn’t much matter.
Finally, today marked the end of the presidential run-off election in Zimbabwe, where the incumbent Robert Mugabe won a landslide victory with 85% of the vote and has been sworn in to begin his sixth five-year term. Of course, the outcome may have been slightly affected by the somewhat unorthodox campaigning strategies of Mugabe’s party officials against Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change. Mugabe only drew 43% of the vote to Tsvangirai’s 48% in the first election, so, the question that gets raised is, “how did Mugabe gain 42% of the electorate in under four months?” Well, this picture from the front page of this Thursday’s New York Times says it all:
That is an 11-month old boy whose legs were broken by members of Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party to force citizens into voting for him in the run-off election. If you didn’t know, Tsvangirai officially dropped out of the race last week to prevent the killing and abuse of his supporters and fellow countrymen. He watched the “election” take place from the safety of the Dutch Embassy in Harare.
And, that was a brief week-in-review from yours truly. It might seem a tad grim, but don’t worry. With any luck, next week we’ll be authorizing some serious offshore drilling that not only won’t have an effect on the price of crude oil, but will destroy the environment as well.
————————————————————————————–
Editor’s Note, July 10th, 2008: It turns out, according to the corrections department at the New York Times, that the photograph seen above and on the front page of their June 26 publication wasn’t entirely factual. Yes, the 11-month year old Zimbabwean had casts on his feet and, yes, his mother and he were targeted by Mugabe’s ruling party because her husband was a supporter for the opposition party of Morgan Tsvangirai. However, the mother did keep mum about the fact that her child was wearing the leg casts before the incident with Mugabe supporters due to the fact that the child has club feet. The New York Times discovered this when they took the child to Harare to get medical attention and found that he had no bone fractures. The mother hid the information from reporters in an effort to get help in curing her son’s ailment, but she still maintains, bolstered by some shaky testimony by people near the attack, that her child was harmed by youths supporting Mugabe.
