Editor’s note: Harper’s Magazine might be one of the most important periodicals published in these here United States. Don’t be fooled when some outlets regard it as liberal muckraking trash. The only thing that I find liberating is the honesty that they bring to the pillars or privilege. It’s definitely not good reading material for people who can’t handle the truth. I thought that a weekly feature on this site should include the magazine that I get some of my news from. Let me know what you think…
President George W. Bush called for $145 billion in tax cuts, describing the measures as a “shot in the arm” for the U.S. economy, which caused stock values to plunge in Australia, Tokyo, Hong Kong, China, and across Europe. “There’s something approaching panic in the market,” said an analyst with Bank of America. “The short-term risks,” explained Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, “are to the downside.” Researchers found that foreigners invested $414 billion in American companies in 2007, up 90 percent from 2006. “This is a vote of confidence in the American economy,” said Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert M. Kimmitt. “Do we want the communists to own the banks, or the terrorists?” asked financial commentator Jim Cramer. “I’ll take any of it.” John McCain won the South Carolina Republican primary, Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton won in the Nevada caucuses, and the Supreme Court decided that Texas could exclude Dennis Kucinich’s name from the ballots in the Democratic primary because Kucinich refused to take a party loyalty oath. British researchers determined that children universally dislike clowns, finding them “unknowable,” and a German merchant ship set sail for Venezuela partially powered by a fuel-saving kite.
It emerged that the ongoing riots that followed the Kenyan presidential election, in which at least 650 people were killed, had been partially planned; leaflets calling for ethnic killings had been distributed prior to the election, and village elders had encouraged young Kalenjin men (allied with the defeated Raila Odinga) to hunt Kikuyus (allied with victor Mwai Kibaki) with bows and arrows. “We attack people, we burn their homes, and then we take their animals,” said a Kalenjin man. “The community raised the money for the gasoline.” A babysitter in Honolulu threw a toddler off an overpass into busy traffic, and parents in Australia were suing an embryo-testing clinic for allowing their child to carry a cancer gene. Researchers in San Diego announced that they had cloned human embryos from skin cells, the FDA determined that cloned animals are acceptable food, and Hungarian scientists created a computer program that, based on its analysis of 6,000 barks from 14 Hungarian sheepdogs, can exceed human capability in accurately classifying sheepdog barks. The thoughts of a monkey in North Carolina controlled the actions of a robot in Japan.
The lone power plant operating in Hamas-controlled Gaza was shut down for lack of fuel. “At least 800,000 people,” said official Derar Abu Sissi, “are now in darkness.” Chess master Bobby Fischer died in Iceland, a man in Las Vegas was arrested for killing his girlfriend by driving a six-inch stake into her head, and a Winchester, Virginia, man was arrested for burning an 11-year-old girl with a Hot Pocket sandwich. A New York City construction worker was suing a hospital for treating his head injury by knocking him out and giving him an unwanted rectal exam, and the ACLU filed a brief in support of Senator Larry Craig (R., Idaho), arguing that people who engage in sex acts in public bathrooms have an expectation of privacy. Scientists funded by mobile-phone companies found that if the phones are used before bedtime their radiation can reduce sleep and cause headaches and confusion; the Mobile Manufacturers Forum insisted that the “results were inconclusive.” It was observed that Tahina spectabilis, a giant palm tree of Madagascar, commits suicide when it flowers at the end of its century-long lifespan, and New York researchers using carbon nanotubes created the darkest material known to history. Scientists in Chicago found that lonely people are more likely to assign human qualities to their pets and to believe in God, and Louis de Cazenave of the Fifth Senegalese Rifles, one of the last two French veterans of World War I, died at age 110. “War,” he explained in 2005, “is something absurd, useless, that nothing can justify.”
— Paul Ford
