Why should we have such unnatural creatures in churchyards?

Today, the 90th anniversary of the end of World War I, the US has one remaining veteran of that war. Britain has 4, France 1. Germany, Austria, and Russia have none.

In Pakistan, Israrullah Zehri, who defended as “honor killings” the burying alive of three girls who demanded the right to choose their own husbands, has been made minister for postal services, while Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani, who presided over an illegal jirga which gave girls, aged 2 to 5, as compensation to the family of a murdered man, has been made minister of... wait for it... education.

Headline of the Day: “Garden Gnomes Banned from Church Cemetery Because They Are ‘Unnatural Creatures.’” According to a spokesman for the Diocese of Bath and Wells, “There is no such thing as a real gnome so why should we have such unnatural creatures in churchyards?” As opposed to your imaginary sky god.

Mary Poppins wasn't good enough?

Yesterday I talked about Bush using 9/11 as another clean-slate moment, like his falling on the wagon. I debated including his coming to Christ (I feel soiled just typing that phrase), but I believe Bush doesn’t consider himself a true “born-again” Christian, because that would entail admitting that he was once wrong, which he is congenitally incapable of doing.

Take a quiz: which America-hating minority are you?

For once, it’s the Poles invading Germany. Polish gnomes, anyway.

According to the Post, the source for the US claim that Iraq had mobile weapons labs was some defector who talked to a foreign spy agency. Bush, Cheney, Powell, etc, bandied it about everywhere and no one in the US knew so much as the name of this alleged source. Now it turns out he’s related to a leader of Chalabi’s organization. Remember when a woman who testified to Congress in 1990 about Iraqi troops ripping babies out of incubators in Kuwait turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador?

More news from the culture wars: the relevant House committee approves increasing fines on broadcasters who air “indecent” material from $27,500 to $500,000.

Good Jeffrey Sachs piece on Haiti.

3 strikes inmates are now 1/4 of California’s prisoners. 672 of them are serving 25 years to life for simple drug possession, 354 for petty theft.

I mentioned that in Orange County three 12-year old girls falsely accused a homeless man of assault to cover up coming home late. They were, against expectations, given actual sentences. 30 to 45 days (the homeless man spent 8 months inside before being released).

Blair gives a defiant speech saying that everything he did in Iraq was right, and he’ll do it again. Possibly channeling one of those Bush ads, he says, according to the Guardian: “In what amounted to a personal testimony of his reasons for taking the country into conflict, the prime minister said the September 11 terrorist attacks had been a "revelation" that had convinced him of the need to tackle rogue states and "religious fanatics" prepared to "bring about Armageddon".” Armageddon, revelation, and THEY’RE the religious fanatics.

Speaking of religious fanatics, John “Lost to a Dead Guy” Ashcroft is in the hospital with something painful. Do you suppose he did something to piss God off, like give in to the temptation to...dance?

Or trying to get the medical records of women who had abortions, which a district judge has just refused to allow. The law banning “partial-birth abortions” included language asserting that the procedure (if there is such a procedure) is never medically necessary as justification for not allowing any exemptions for the health of the mother. And perhaps to set up this slimy little blackmail attempt by Justice.

David Bell, the chief inspector of schools in Britain, says that for girls to fulfill in life the potential they show in schools, they need strong role models, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Elsewhere in the papers, Patrick Stewart of Star Trek blames films for violence against women. He says nothing about violence against vampires. Or Klingons.

Armageddon cuts and WMD-RPAs

From the Telegraph, a story with a hilarious 1st paragraph, whose effect is completely destroyed by the 2nd paragraph:

“A New Zealand train driver is on indefinite leave suffering from stress after running over a garden gnome.

“The gnome was apparently placed on rail tracks in the North Island city of Tauranga, south-east of Auckland, as a practical joke, police said. But when the driver's train struck the pottery figure in the early hours of yesterday, he believed he had killed a child.”

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Morocco has passed the most progressive, pro-woman family code in the Arab world, including equal powers within marriage and a virtual ban on polygamy.

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Evidently the proposition on the CA. March ballot for $15b in borrowing is linked (as in, if one fails they both fail) to one for a balanced budget. Governor Ahnuuld warns that if they fail, there will be “Armageddon cuts” in services. Nice to have an action movie star to explain these things to us.

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Bush said (quotes from different sections of the SOTU speech): “America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our people” and “it is not enough to serve our enemies with legal papers,” and “no one can now doubt the word of America.” I’m telling you, it’s clear as day: George Bush does not know how to read. He sneers at written forms of speech like permission slips and legal papers, but is ok with the oral “word of America.” Can’t read. Clear as day.

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(See David Corn’s take on what “America’s word” is now worth after all the lies about Iraq).

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NBC offered to kill a documentary about Michael Jackson on Dateline if he gave an interview, for which they’d also have paid him $5m. That’s the second network willing to sell out its journalistic integrity to Michael Jackson.

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You know the problem with celebrating the Chinese Year of the Monkey? An hour later, you feel like throwing your feces again.

Oh, like you weren’t all thinking that too.

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Joe Conason is using an acronym derived from the SOTU address, that I’d like to see widely used: WMD-RPA (weapons of mass destruction-related program activities).

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The French, trying to be even-handed in banning manifestations of religion, started with headscarves and “conspicuous” crucifixes, is now realizing it will have to include bandanas, Sikh turbans, beards if they have a religious significance...

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On the other hand, there’s this good news for French women: “Frequent underarm shaving could play a key role in a suggested link between breast cancer and deodorant use, according to a scientist.”

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American entrepreneurialism at its finest: “Local tourism officials cheered the news that San Mateo County in California will host the trial of Scott Peterson, right, charged with murdering his wife, Laci, and unborn child in 2002.”

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A Belgian Catholic cardinal says: “I am prepared to sign here in my blood that of all those who say they are lesbian or gay, at most five to 10 per cent are effectively lesbian or gay. All the rest are sexual perverts.” I don’t know about that, but they should definitely take him up on the blood thing. He went on to attack democracy and endorsed men who really need sex going to brothels (although he says they won’t be happy).

Boris Yeltsin, who is amazingly still alive, admits that he had 5 heart attacks while in office.

Medieval lesbian strip show and banquet

OR TREAT: Scott McClellan explains why a question about troop levels is a “trick question”: because, like the Mission Accomplished banner, that’s entirely a matter for the military, of which Shrub is only the commander in chief, after all.

US troops surround the town of Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s birthplace, with razor wire; no one in or out without US-issued i.d. cards. Some commentator said this was the first “strategic hamlet,” but I suspect the model is Gaza.

2 American soldiers in Iraq have been arrested for converting to Islam and marrying local women, in defiance of orders not to get married.

At an EU-Chinese conference in Beijing, one subject of which was counterfeiting, the Italian foreign minister is caught by journalists buying a fake Rolex.

Paul Wolfowitz says that Iraqis want Bush to be reelected. “When they hear the message that we might not be there next year, they get very scared.” This is the man who once warned “foreigners” against meddling in Iraq.

The Republican Party tried to get CBS to let it vet a miniseries about Ronald Reagan. “[RNC chairman] Gillespie said that if CBS denies the request, he will ask the network to run a note across the bottom of the screen every 10 minutes during the program's presentation informing viewers that the miniseries is not accurate.”

Speaking of not accurate, how is it that a WW II film (Windtalkers) shows a 50-starred American flag and not a single actor or member of the crew noticed? 80 years ago, Erich von Stroheim had the actors playing Austro-Hungarian officers wear historically accurate underwear, so I don’t think I’m asking for too much for the flag to be right.

Safire deals with that annoying thing Bush does, which I’ve complained about before, where he says that people “need to” do something.

The sheriff’s dept for the Columbine area is selling, repeat, selling, videos of the trench coat gang practicing shooting guns.

There’s a lot of talk about Iraqification. What the Pentagon actually means by this is an old Iraqi custom: human shields. They don’t expect Iraqi military or police to do stuff, they expect them to take the brunt of Resistance attacks. We know this because they are being kept short of guns and ammunition, training (Bush talked this week about speeding up training, which is already less than a week), and bullet-proof vests.

Massachusetts’s Governor Mitt Romney is trying to restore the death penalty, including requiring higher standards of evidence for execution than for conviction. What does that say about his toleration for wrongful convictions?

Get ready for Jessica Lynch week, with a tv movie next Sunday, then a Diane Sawyer interview grotesquely scheduled for Veteran’s Day. And she has that book, “co-”authored by one of the NY Times’s disgraced former writers, which is why her publishers wouldn’t let her meet with the Iraqi who told US soldiers where she was and who has his own book coming out. This is a 1940s screwball comedy about someone who was in a car crash but turns into a celebrity as a series of lies about her spirals out of control (remember the amnesia the Pentagon ordered her to have had?). In fact, it’s a specific screwball comedy: Preston Sturges’s Hail the Conquering Hero.

The Baltic states are, according to a London Sunday Times article, specializing in bachelor parties for Brits. “Now the latest “must-do” for a British stag weekend is to fly to the Baltic states and fire machineguns at pictures of the groom. Some, it is rumoured, have even paid locally for the privilege of firing rocket-propelled grenades at live cows.” Tallinnpissup.com offers a “medieval lesbian strip show and banquet.”

Tom Friedman may have reached his nadir, talking about aid to Iraq. “Saudi Arabia actually cares more about nurturing democracy in Iraq than Germany and France.” Yeah, ‘cause that aid is all about democracy. Sure it is. The aid conference, like the sudden drive to rehire the Iraqi military, is all about fungibility, the latter replacing dead GIs with dead Iraqis, the former about reducing US expenses. Does anyone think that extra aid from Germany or Saudi Arabia will actually mean more money spent in Iraq? Of course not, the US will just reduce its spending by $1 for every dollar received. The aid is for Americans, not Iraqis.

Also benefitting: rich Iraqis, since Paul Bremer imposed a flat tax, max 15%, on Iraq.

Second garden gnome story this week: a British study shows their presence reduces the value of a house by £500.

Failed liberations: Iraqis, garden gnomes

In the Tuesday NYT, Paul Krugman (who gave a great talk broadcast on CSPAN, I believe viewable online at booknotes.org) writes about the wilful ignorance of Bush and America in general about the views of others, the column brought on by 1) Bush’s failure to understand moderate Muslims’ distrust of the US (I made the same point yesterday by mocking Bush’s hyper-simplified analysis of Iraqi militants as hating freedom and loving terror), 2) the hate mail he got when he tried to explain, not excuse, the Malaysian PM’s anti-semitic remarks. Trying to understand, rather than issuing anathemas, is taken to be moral weakness. There was a mini-series about Hitler a few months ago, which originally was supposed to have been about his early years and based on the very good Ian Kershaw biography. By the time it reached tv, his childhood was reduced to about 2 minutes (presumably because showing his father beating him up would have been taken as sympathy for Hitler), the title was changed to something like Hitler: Rise of Evil, in case you mistook CBS’s moral stance, Kershaw had demanded his name be removed, and Hitler was played as a ranting lunatic, with no attempt in 4 hours to get into his head at all, much less explain how a nation could respond to him. 58 years later and CBS was scared it would be perceived as soft on Hitler. It was a film that filled Americans’ deep need NOT to understand.

For another example of wilful misunderstanding, there’s been a lot of condemnation in the last 2 days of the bombing in Iraq of the International Committee of the Red Cross, but I have yet to hear a suggestion that there’s a reason beyond sheer assholery: a big red symbol of Christ’s death and alleged resurrection didn’t carry that much weight in fucking Iraq.

I mean, in the same newspapers there are stories about the shitstorm in Italy where a judge ordered crucifixes removed from public schoolrooms (following one of Mussolini’s laws), after objections from a Muslim student. In case anyone needed a reminder that not everyone is a Christian. (Yes, I know that the ICRC claims the cross isn’t Christian but Swiss, but c’mon.)

Iain Duncan Smith is facing what we Kallyfohrnians call a recall as Tory party leader, under rules that also made recall way too easy (15% of Tory MPs could secretly demand it). Simon Hoggart of the Guardian: “This looks likely to be the fourth leadership election in eight years. The Tories seem to work their way through leaders like other people get new cars, except that a new car will get you somewhere. ... Heaven knows what the Tories would do if they ever found a leader they liked. They'd have nothing to do to fill the empty hours.” He might retain his job, simply because no one else really wants it--no one thinks the Tories will win the next election, so the next Tory leader will lose the election and be knifed in the back in his turn--but IDS is mortally wounded and can’t survive until the next election (probably in 2005).

And nearly 6 months after the flight carrier thing, Bush claims that the “Mission accomplished” banner did not refer to the war, but to that carrier’s mission, and that it was the work of the crew, not his PR people at all. Actually, it turns out to have been made by a private vendor, and no one is saying who paid for it. Also, Bush used the words “mission accomplished” in speeches, so blaming the carrier crew is especially weaselly.

Trent Lott on how to deal with Iraq: “If we have to, we just mow the whole place down, see what happens. You’re dealing with insane suicide bombers who are killing our people, and we need to be very aggressive in taking them out.”

From the Daily Telegraph:

More than 40 gnomes stolen and liberated by a shadowy French underground movement were yesterday condemned to life in a "dusty cupboard" by a police chief hunting the thieves.

Earlier this year priests arriving at the cathedral in Saint-Die in the Vosges found 84 stolen garden gnomes lined up on the steps as if waiting for Mass.

Flapping above them was a banner, which read "Free at last!" But after months of investigation, the police have given up trying to find the culprits.

An open day was held on Monday for those wanting to claim the gnomes. Fewer than half were collected.

"The liberators have failed," said Michel Klein, the local police chief. "The gnomes are now going to spend the rest of their lives locked up in dusty cupboard."

Despite M Klein's remarks, the closing of the Saint-Die gnome theft case marks another victory for France's gnome liberators. Since 1997, they have freed some 6,500 gnomes around France, stealing them from private gardens and leaving them in forests, beside lakes, or in one case encircling a roundabout.

In the strangest case, 11 gnomes were found hanging from a bridge in Briey accompanied by a suicide note saying: "When you read these few words, we will no longer be part of your selfish world, where we serve merely as pretty decoration."

Suspicion in the Saint-Die case naturally fell on the Front de Liberation des Nains de Jardin (Garden Gnome Liberation Front), whose leaders were arrested in 1997 and given suspended prison sentences.

Whereas in Britain thieves steal garden gnomes to resell them there is no suspicion that the FLNJ is out for money. Instead, they repaint the gnomes in green, representing trees, and blue for the sky, and cover up their clownish red noses. The gnomes are then liberated in a ceremony involving techno music, fireworks and, police suspect, drugs.

Saddam and the Elvis factor

Here’s a cute story that 6 Congresscritters--Reps. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn.; Bart Stupak, D-Mich.; Jim DeMint, R-S.C.; Mike Doyle, D-Pa.; and Sens. John Ensign, R-Nev. and Sam Brownback, R-Kan.--live in Washington in housing subsidized by a secretive religious group. Isn’t that special?

Lacking a DSL line, I usually keep at least 2 windows open while web-surfing and click between them while 1 is loading an article. Sometimes you get odd juxtapositions. A NY Times story on the Daily Show in the arts section quotes a segment from a couple of weeks ago:

When Mr. Stewart asked Mr. Colbert for his take on whether Saddam was dead or alive, the correspondent answered, "One thing is certain: If Saddam is dead, it greatly reduces his ability to control Iraq." But wouldn't his death end his control entirely? asked Mr. Stewart. Not necessarily, argued Mr. Colbert: "When this man appears in public no one is sure it's actually him, and yet he's held an iron grip on power since 1979 — 24 years of brutal dictatorship, all while only maybe existing. The point is we can kill Saddam Hussein but we won't win the war until we kill the idea of Saddam Hussein. So what we need to do is develop bombs that kill ideas."

And over in the Telegraph a story says that with footage of Saddam continually popping up after the US says he’s dead, no one in Iraq will believe he’s dead even if a body is produced--the “Elvis factor,” as it is called.

As worried as I was that American imperialism would be buoyed by a victory in Iraq achieved at a low cost in American lives, and with all those POWs back and happily negotiating movie-of-the-week deals, there is some hope in the attitude of the Iraqis and in the Pentagon’s staggering ability to lose the peace. If the Iraqis ever danced, it was the minute waltz, so quickly did their attitude turn from Hey, thanks for the liberation to Why are you guys still here?, and What have you done for us lately? They’re already asking why they should have to pay for contracts they never signed with American companies that were certainly not the lowest bidders and which never contributed to the election campaign of any Iraqis. I suspect we can also whistle for those four permanent bases the US wants--no Iraqi politician can survive as a perceived American puppet: just look how fast Chalabi’s star waned. This is what happens when your motives are in doubt: even the Iraqis who see this as a liberation believe that for the Americans liberation was only a happy coincidence to their real motives, oil and empire. So they see no reason for gratitude, and they’re right (also, we didn’t ask for gratitude, which they might have been willing to give, we simply imposed Bechtel and Haliburton and Jay Garner and the permanent bases on them). And Iraqi nationalism turned out to be pretty potent.

As for losing the peace, the same power vacuum that allowed all that looting has also allowed in all sorts of Iraqi power-grabbers. Like the Shiite cleric who came from Iran, marched into the government offices in Kut, declared himself the elected governor without bothering with the formality of an election, and the Marines can’t figure out how to get him out. If they ever do figure it out, I hope they tell the rest of us, since we had the same problem in 2000.

The Israeli army assassinated an AP cameraman. This sort of thing has been increasing; they have also been deliberately targeting peace activist “human shields.”

Both the NY Times and the WashPost have stories about Rumsfeld now “standing tall.” Dunno, to me he still looks like Robert MacNamara as a gnome, shorter, wider and squintier.

Some R group I’ve never heard of is attacking R moderates in tv ads digitally inserting French flags.

Here’s a creepy WashPost headline: “Bush to Worship With U.S. Troops in Texas.” Yee ha. Creepier is what Bush said in his radio address: “As a nation, we continue to pray for all who serve in our military and those who remain in harm's way. America mourns those who have been called home, and we pray that their families will find God's comfort and God's grace.” Count me out. Also, the White House Easter Egg roll (how is that different from an Easter egg hunt? [for the purposes of a joke, I will assume no difference])(or from the thing you get in Chinese restaurants?) will be closed to the public, only military families. They are expected to find none of the eggs, but claim that the Easter Bunny smuggled them into Syria.

Oh for fuck’s sake--the US plans to build a pipeline to send Iraqi oil to Israel. That shouldn’t create any sort of backlash at all. Since this isn’t mentioned anywhere else, and the story seems reasonably well sourced, I’ll give the URL.

I haven’t mentioned SARS yet, but shouldn’t China get some sort of spanking for covering up an epidemic for 3 months?

Quote of the week: Rep. Joseph Pitts (R-Penn.) said that amendments to the bill to ban "partial-birth" abortions would allow a woman "having a bad day" to get an abortion.

As I said, I hate to be supporting the white landowners in Zimbabwe, but there it is. Incidentally, an opposition leader says that if he wins the next elections, he will seize the farms which have been seized by Mugabe cronies. This could be fun, but I don't foresee a lot of planting getting done. Which is too bad, since the banking system is dependent on mortgages paid by white farmers and the economy on farm exports.

Florida is doing something or other to make it possible to harvest organs from those it executes. I assume with their consent, although you never know in Florida.

Just because Nawaz Sharif's wife declared her intention to lead his party after his conviction does not, as it turns out, mean that the party has to accept her as its leader. And it didn't.

If Germans were not all comfortable with the Christian Democratic Union being run by a cripple, they surely won't be happy with the female Easterner they just replaced him with. Don't bother learning her name, she will never run the country, being about as electable in the modern Germany as someone named Seymour Lipschitz.

London Times:

Gnomes released into wild
FROM ADAM SAGE IN PARIS

A SINISTER threat returned to haunt suburban France yesterday when the infamous Garden Gnome Liberation Front (GLF) claimed its most daring exploit to date.

In a statement, the Paris branch said that it had "freed" 20 of the 2,000 gnomes on display at an exhibition in the Bagatelle Park on the outskirts on the French capital.

A GLF statement said: "We want to end the ridicule to which these garden gnomes are subjected. We want to return them to their natural habitat by releasing them into the forests they should never have left."

The theft came more than two years after French justice dismantled a movement that began as a student joke but turned into a wide-ranging social trend that forced home-owners to buy guard dogs and lock up their gnomes at night.

On that occasion, in November 1997, three men were given suspended prison sentences and a fourth lost his driving licence.

As I predicted right off the bat, the Sudanese factory was probably not what the US said it was. Oops. Incidentally, soil samples from where? The land around it is evidently all paved.

And in the camp in Afghanistan, we killed mostly, well, those of in the big UC campuses should have expected this--foreign exchange students from Asia (in this case Pakistan). We've managed to push Pakistan further into Islamism, with the prime minister announcing a total shift to sharia law with mandatory five-times-daily prayer. Oh, and they have one of our intact cruise missiles now and are taking it apart. Fortunately, this one already missed its target by 400 miles, so they may not be learning anything all that useful. That's the thing about Afghanistan: chickens always come back to roost there. That was my first thought when I heard that foreign-financed terrorists were operating out of Afghanistan: boy, must the Russians be laughing up their asses at us over this one. The lost cruise missile (or maybe two) is like those stingers we gave to the Mujahadin and then spent years trying to buy back at inflated prices after the Russians left. And Iran is massing its army over the Afghan border because the Taliban seems to have taken a bunch of Iranian officials--yes, including embassy officials--hostage.

New game for reporters: figure out which Russian businessman seems to be giving Chernomyrdin and Yeltsin their marching orders this week and write an article calling them the new Rasputin. Hours of fun.

Not helping Russia any is that its chief foreign banker, Germany, is having an election in which another fat leader who way outstayed his welcome is going to be booted out.

Speaking of terrorist targets, Radio Free Iran begins operating in a couple of days. There would have been a Radio Free Iraq too but the US decided to operate it out of Prague without actually bothering to ask the Czechs whether they'd like this future ground zero in the middle of their capitol. Next to a nursery school. So it's been postponed a bit.

Britain is thinking about changing its law to prevent anonymous sperm donation.

OK, since the Church of England allowed the ordination of women, a lot of clergy have defected to Rome, but there's one whose wife is one of the new priests. And you thought Clinton's home life was a little frosty.

Speaking of which: cigars?

From the Sunday Times (London): "Eleven garden gnomes have been found hanged from a bridge in northeastern France in what appeared to be a mass suicide. Police at Briey found a suicide note in which the gnomes said they wanted to "quit this world" and join a "sect of the temple of submissive dwarves". The gnomes' origin remains a mystery: local gardeners report nothing suspicious.

Two die in blast at gnome plant

Warsaw: Two young men died in an explosion at a Polish garden gnome factory, PAP news agency reported. Three other people were injured in the blast at the plant in Kozuchow, western Poland, it said. A police spokeswoman said paint fumes might be to blame. (Reuters)

The California Supreme Court rules that a single crime can generate more than one strike for the 3 strikes law. The example given is that carjacking is usually prosecuted as both robbery and kidnapping. In the case involved, the guy was in a fight 15 years ago (strikes 1 & 2), and is now convicted of stealing a carton of cigarettes. The brand isn't given, but in a perfect universe, they would be Lucky Strikes.

According to Wisconsin doctors, a poorly-drafted partial birth abortion law has outlawed all abortions in the state. Legislators disagree, but no abortions are now being performed, doctors not being willing to risk life imprisonment.

Why the hell is Clinton in Germany campaigning for Helmut Kohl?

Israel celebrates its 50th anniversary by shooting 9 Palestinians dead. I guess it wasn't a big enough cake to have 50.

Does anyone actually feel sad that Seinfeld is no longer on the air?

Officers of the LAPD have been told to return the bayonets issued to them. The mind boggles.

Rumor says that Bob Dole has had a face lift. Anyone seen a recent picture?

A record 17 women are running for the Jordanian parliament in tomorrow's elections (against 535 men). The first and only woman MP was elected in 1993 and has been subject to a soupçon of harassment, most notably her husband being forced to divorce her.

Nelson Mandela met both Khadafi and the Spice Girls last week. Anyone have a joke on that?

Article in today's LA Times on forfeiture laws. The Justice Dept is due to argue before the Supreme Court that it's legal for the gov. to seize money taken in or out of the country but not reported, even when it was acquired perfectly legally. As I understand it, it is the money that is being punished for criminal activity, not the owner of the money.

From the London Sunday Times:

Garden guerrillas go to war on the gnome front
by Kirsty Lang

THE kidnappers pounce without warning, striking terror into suburban France. Their victims reappear far from home, abandoned in dense woodland or floating down rivers on rafts.

Last Friday, however, four members of the Gnome Liberation Front (GLF) were brought before a crowded courtroom in Bithune, northern France, to answer more than 150 charges of seizing garden gnomes, a miniature tea set and windmill, and a plastic toadstool.

Their lawyers defended their cause with passion. "Your honour, have you never heard the cries of anguished garden gnomes screaming with cold and the indignity of being treated as lamp posts by passing dogs?" said Bruno Dubout, a defence advocate, his face red with suppressed laughter. He suggested the word "gnome" was politically incorrect and should be replaced by "vertically challenged figurine".

The prosecutor refused to be diverted. "We are discussing stolen objects and the violation of people's gardens," she reminded the court sternly, demanding that the GLF leaders be sentenced to 80 hours' community service with the forestry commission. "This is a free country and people should have the right to keep gnomes even if others consider it to be in bad taste." The case was adjourned for two weeks.

Although the judge struggled to keep a straight face, the 10 victims of the new-wave terrorists were not amused. "This is nothing but a show trial," cried Louis Maille, a retired supermarket security guard. "Next time someone tries to steal my gnomes I won't bother going to the police. I'll be ready with my shotgun."

Maille demanded compensation of #500 for the loss of 10 gnomes. When the judge challenged the figure, he explained that they were "deluxe, glass-fibre gnomes" from Belgium.

Hundreds of people have fallen foul of the GLF, which was initially set up last year by a group of art students in Normandy as a "protest against bad taste", but prompted copy-cat raids throughout much of the country. GLF attack squads leave calling cards informing targets: "Your gnomes have now been liberated so they can live in peace in the forest."

Until the "Bithune Four" were captured last August, members had evaded detection. The Alengon branch in Normandy even held a press conference with their faces obscured by balaclavas. "We mean no harm to gnome owners," they explained solemnly. "We just feel these little creatures would be happier in their natural habitat instead of being imprisoned behind a garden fence."

The founder of the GLF, an elusive figure known only as "Le Prof", his nom de guerre, said last week he had become disturbed by the recent invasion of garden gnomes imported from Germany and Britain.

Speaking from a telephone box at an undisclosed location, he said: "Gnomes are the ultimate symbol of bad taste and kitsch. I find them offensive to my visual sensibilities." He admitted he had been surprised at the way the movement had taken off. "We obviously struck a nerve in France," he said.

So widespread are the GLF's operations now that many owners have been forced to bring their gnomes indoors at night or to buy guard dogs to protect them. Some have even organised themselves into gnome defence associations.

"The police don't take this issue seriously. This is not about liberation, it's about theft," complained Corinne Helga, of the Friends of Garden Gnomes Association in Strasbourg. Helga, a songwriter, has formed a pop group called the Gnomes which has made two singles singing their praises.

"Our aim is not to make money, but to make gnome owners more assertive and proud of their hobby," said Helga, who has 20 gnomes and a magic grotto in her garden. "I don't understand why they attract all this hatred. Gnomes are kind protectors of the earth."

Fritz Friedmann, of the International Association for the Protection of Garden Gnomes, based in Basel, Switzerland, believes the anti-gnome sentiment in France is a deeply sinister development. "The Nazis were the first people who tried to ban gnomes, but as soon as the second world war was over, people rushed out to buy them again," said Friedmann, 80, who publishes the Gnome Gazette.

French commentators have seized earnestly on the phenomenon as a manifestation of growing class divisions. "This is about the ruling classes having fun at the expense of working people," said Jean-Claude Kaufmann, a sociologist. Jean-Yves Jouannais, an art critic, has devoted an entire book to the subject of class, taste and the garden gnome.

Le Prof, however, vehemently denies being a member of the sneering classes. "There are several members from working-class backgrounds in the Gnome Liberation Front," he said. There is also a chubby skeleton in his closet: "My own parents have a gnome in their garden," he revealed, "which I've painted green and gold to make it look less offensive."

Much to the chagrin of Le Prof, the publicity generated by the GLF has prompted a sharp rise in the sale of garden gnomes in France.

A spokesman for Gardena France, the gnome market leader, said its sales had increased tenfold. "It's all very depressing," admitted Le Prof. "People just haven't got the point."